September 23rd was the day that we finally made it to Yellowstone. By the time we got to the East gate of the park it was nearly 4pm. We were a bit disheartened to see that all of the campgrounds that were still open (only about half) were full.
We turned around and exited the park and back-tracked a few miles to a USDA Forest Service campground that we saw on our way in, Eagle Creek campground. The place was rather small, maybe 20 sites, and we were lucky to get one of the few remaining riverfront sites. A massive bison seemed to have laid claim to the site directly across from us, so we hung out in the campervan for a while before he s-l-o-w-l-y moved on. It wasn’t long before the campground was filled to capacity with other Yellowstone rejects, and many more drove through looking for a site before backtracking even further towards the town of Cody.
We woke up early the next day and were in Yellowstone by 8:15am. We saw a grizzly down on the riverbank less than a mile from our campsite. He reared up on his hind legs when I put the campervan in reverse, which was awesome to see, but he bolted into the woods before I could shoot him with my Nikon. By the time we got to Madison campground on the other side of the park at 10am, it was once again full. Well, dang. We made reservations for Friday and Saturday night, then spent the rest of the day touring Yellowstone knowing that we had a spot back in Eagle Creek (we’d anticipated this problem and paid for our site for another day before we left that morning.) As for Yellowstone, the place is simply amazing; not much else to say about it, really. After a while, you become numb to the beauty of it all and start taking it for granted – oh look, another crazy geyser; more steam coming out of that insanely picturesque creek; another herd of bison in the road, etc. We saw most of the attractions along the main loop of the park that day before driving all the way back to our campsite in Eagle Creek – right around 200 miles, in total.
One interesting thing was the amount of Chinese tourists; it’s no exaggeration to say that they accounted for about half of the people in the park. It was funny to see their reaction to two little blonde-haired blue-eyed kids; there were hundreds of pictures taken of the kids. The oogling reached a peak while we waited for Old Faithful to do its thing. I was out in the sun saving seats for the show, and turned around to see that Cooper was the star attraction of her own show for a group of 20-30 Chinese. They were ecstatic that she was willing to help them practice English, and even more excited that she threw a peace sign, like all of them, while posing for pictures with them.
The next day we again headed back into the park. We did the Northern loop before checking-in to our reserved site in the Madison campground. There aren’t as many specific sites to get out and see in the Northern part of the park, so the day quickly turned into a lot of time in the campervan. The views were no less incredible, just different. We did break up the day by having lunch at one of the picnic areas, where we shared our table with a retired professor from South Africa and his girlfriend from Zambia. They were very interesting to talk to, and the kids loved them for the peanut M&Ms that they shared.
We finally made it to Madison late in the afternoon of the 25th. We immediately set out to walk along the river that borders the campground. We watched the fly-fisherman do their thing, took a ton of pictures of the kids, and then were fortunate to have front-row seats to a bull elk trying to leave his legacy with two different females. His luck didn’t pan out, and he was rather loud in voicing his frustration. We heard his bugling all night long.
