I had always wanted to go to Yellowstone National Park and we finally got there July 2017. We decided to stay in a state park just across the Idaho border from Yellowstone.
We arrived at Henry’s Lake State Park late in the afternoon. The photo above was our view from the back deck of our trailer. A beautiful lake and an awe inspiring sunset which reminds you just how much God cared for us to provide us such beauty.
One of the first things we did in Yellowstone was to take a Kayak tour on the huge Lake Yellowstone. It is the largest natural lake wholly within the United States. We had a 4 hour paddling tour of a portion of the lake.
We didn’t get to go the whole way because a big thunderstorm blew up and we had to head back to the dock before the wind blew us off the lake. It dropped hail in the Northern part of the park. Linda really got into kayak paddling.
Yellowstone NP is HUGE. We would often drive for 2-3 hours to see another part of the park. There was wildlife roaming everywhere. We followed a huge bison (buffalo) down the road as we creeped along waiting for it to decide to wander off to the side of the road so we could pass.
Yellowstone has one of only two free roaming herds of buffalo in the U.S. The other one is in a state park in North Texas. We saw foxes, elk, moose, buffalo, antelope and more all roaming the forests and meadows as we traveled around the park.
We saw hot springs everywhere, soda mountains bubbling, forests, mountains, canyons, waterfalls, geysers and then rivers running in every direction out of the park. Turns out that several major rivers have their headwaters in Yellowstone.
The only disappointment in Yellowstone was the “Old Faithful Geyser”. The day we were there it was delayed way past the expected time and was a little underwhelming. The problem was we had just seen another geyser that spouted for over 15 minutes. Here’s the story in a video.
Next I decided to try out my first experience with fly fishing. I hired a guide to take me into Yellowstone and we fished the Madison river all morning. Since this was my first time, I made all of the typical rookie mistakes. After lots of failure, I learned how to use the rod and flies AND I was rewarded, catching 8 fish.
In Yellowstone NP, everything is catch and release. But it was so much fun. I went back about a week later with Linda and caught several more even without a guide. AND, I fell in the water as I was walking out and got soaked even with my waders on.
To add to the fishing story while we were there, we decided to take our 15 foot Kaboat (inflatable boat) out on Henry’s Lake where we were camped. We fished the morning and only caught one fish, but it was a monster. Everyone at the marina was amazed. It was a 10 lb, 26 inch hybrid Rainbow/Cutthroat trout.
We spent two weeks at Yellowstone exploring the whole park and even went down into Teton National Park one day. We ran into rain that day so the photos didn’t turn out so good. But Yellowstone was amazing.
There were hot springs boiling everywhere with clouds of steam coming up all over as we drove around. We toured many of the boiling ponds and lakes along with Mammoth Springs which was a big mountain build up of springs. Mammoth springs was a huge buildup of rock (kinda like soda dam in the jemez mountains for those of you from Albuquerque) but actually created the whole side of a mountain. The springs were boiling over everywhere. We saw tons of beautiful waterfalls all throughout the park and on the rivers flowing out of Yellowstone.
Wayne & Linda
