With the rain and snow in the forecast we headed to Yellowstone knowing that most of the stops would be hopping in and out of the van. Luckily it only rained while we were in the van but it did snow all day as we were leaving the park. We spent 3 days driving around Yellowstone, the world's first national park.

Geysers, mudpots, hot springs, and other hydrothermal features abound and are crazy, beautiful and slightly terrifying all at the same time. The park sits on top of an active volcano. The thousands of earthquakes that occur in the park annually constantly change the activity of the geysers and hydrothermal features- creating new ones, making some inactive, reactivating some that were once inactive. I know, slightly terrifying.

Old Faithful is one of the most frequent and predictable geysers and was our first stop in the park. It did not disappoint!

Grand Prismatic Spring was steaming and we weren’t able to see the vibrant colors well, but the Excelsior Geyser is an enormous geyser crater (also steaming) that we were entranced by. It was quite cold the day we were there so the chilly air mixed with the hot, humid steam coming off of Excelsior was a super weird feeling.

Steamboat Geyser was one of our favorites and is located in Norris Geyser Basin. It was constantly spewing hot water up to 20 feet and sporadically has major explosions.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was stunning. Massive waterfalls flow through the yellow stone of the canyon. We saw the waterfalls from many vantage points.

The northern half of Yellowstone is where we saw all of our black bears (from safely inside the van) which we were pumped about. I can’t even tell you how many elk and bison we saw. We did have a crazy experience where a bison walked right behind our van while it was parked. We could have reached out and touched it, he was that close.

We ended up camping right outside the West and North entrances of Yellowstone. Our view was no't scenic on the west side but it was super close to the entrance and thunderstormed/hailed on us all night. Our campsite at the North entrance was beautiful when we arrived and covered in snow when we woke up. We don't mind a little snow :)

Snow day.