Day 2: Devils Tower, WY to Yellowstone NP
Devils Tower and Yellowstone
As soon as the sky was bright enough that we could see where we were going we left our parking spot for the night and headed into Devils Tower National Monument.
We arrived before sunrise and had the entire monument to ourselves. The 1.6 mile hike around the mountain was the perfect way to see things.
Next we made our way towards Yellowstone, stopping for a late breakfast in Buffalo, WY and again for a short break in Bighorn National Forest. Short delays were caused by ranchers unloading hundreds of cows in the middle of the highway.
Upon arriving in Yellowstone the weather decided to take a turn and rain forced us to abort our first planned hike. We ended up walking around the mud volcano instead. It’s a very obscure place to visit. Steam rumbles out of a cave, water roils from the heat, and the entire place reeks of sulfur.
When we finished walking the trail at the mud volcano we continued to the Yellowstone Falls. The lack of parking spots and thus long amounts of waiting made the process slow and we only stopped at a few places around the falls.
Next we drove to the trailhead up to Mount Washburn. The 5.7 mile round trip hike to the summit was strenuous and time consuming, but the views were amazing. The fire lookout tower at the top provides a nice place to rest out of the wind.
By the time we hiked back to the car it was getting late and we’d need to shave off our drive through the north part of the park in order to make it to the campground in time (we might add this back tomorrow). It’s probably a good thing we did this. We arrived just after sunset at our planned campground to find out there were no spots left. Many sites outside of the park are first come, first serve, and the ones in the park had all been booked up many months ago.
The first full campsite recommended another campsite a few miles away. It was also full, but recommended another site 20+ miles away. We decided to call some other campgrounds around — all booked. We also called some hotels — either completely booked or started at $205/night.
So we settled on the very remote campground 20+ miles away that we didn’t know for certain had spaces left. There is no cell reception where we were going and printed maps didn’t show the campground, so we saved screenshots of maps on our phone and relied on those along with vague instructions from the previous booked campsite.
After mistakenly following someone into an RV resort that we thought was the campground, we got it all straightened out and made it to the right place. Plenty of campsites were still available. We picked one and finished setting up our tent at 11:30 p.m. local time.
Some observations about Yellowstone that you should know if you decide to travel here:
1) The park is huge and it takes a while to get from one place to the next.
2) I’m glad that my brakes work well — it’s very mountainous with not many guardrails.
3) Everything is packed and if you had someone who can drive around rather than parking while you see sights, you’d probably see a lot more.
4) Parking is terrible nearly everywhere but there doesn’t seem to be an alternative to driving.
5) Make reservations, make reservations, make reservations. Every single campground and hotel is booked for miles in every direction.
6) There is almost no cell reception and if it works it is incredibly slow. Rely on paper maps or plan on getting lost a lot.
7) It’s an amazing park and you could easily spend days here.
Tomorrow (Friday) we see Old Faithful, the Grand Prismatic Springs, and continue on to Grand Teton National Park.
For more pictures as we go, follow me on snapchat: justin.kiel
