Updated Yellowstone National Park Tips and Travel advice August 2020 during COVID

intro
Welcome to RView podcast where we talk about life travel and real estate. Join George and Lisa Hernandez each week as they share insights and parenting tips about their life as a blended family with four teens their crazy travel and adventures and get Lisa’s input about real estate as she juggles it all while still managing her Top Producing real estate brokerage view properties.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Hi, friends. Welcome back to RView podcast. I’m Lisa RichartHernandez. And I’m George Hernandez. Today we are going to tell you all about our trip that the next leg of our cross country 45 day cross country trip. We’ve just left South Dakota and we were in Custer State Park. And we headed across country to Yellowstone and we couldn’t get into our spot that we wanted to be in in West Yellowstone. So we spent one night in Bozeman hot springs, which is those ones about an hour and 15 minutes outside of the West Gate. And we stayed at a Bozeman hot springs campground and RV park. Yes. And it was really cool. Actually. Bozeman is a cute little town. We the resort that we stayed at has like all these hot spring pools, which is the first time we’d ever experienced the hot springs pools. And they had what like 14 different pools?

George
Yeah, they had quite a few pools. I’m not sure if it was quite 14, but there was a lot of them. And they varied in temperature from like 89 degrees to 105.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so it was really cool. Yeah, they, they, they they let the water in and out every single night. And it’s actual like minerals and everything from the hot springs that are supposed to be really, really good for you. So we were there. It was a Saturday night. And due to some sort of religion that they are they’re not open during the day. So they only are open from sunset to sunrise. So we they didn’t even open until I think it was 830 or nine o’clock at night. They open from nine to midnight. And I’ve got the information here. The there’s nine pools and they range in temperature from 59 degrees to 106 degrees.

George
I guess we missed the cool one.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it was a little bit too chilly out for me to be going in a 59 degree pool. There was a couple of pools on the inside and then there was a bunch on the outside it was just really pretty. If you look at our Instagram, or Facebook pages, you’ll see these pictures of like they had these walls that surrounded the pool area that all were fire they were in they like heat heated the place up but it also looked really cool. And then they had like all this up lighting on the plants and the landscaping in different colors and just a really cool atmosphere.

George
What was weird to me was that it not feel kind of like a Vegas kind of pool.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, it really did feel like a Vegas kind of Yeah, but there’s no alcohol or anything. They did have some music playing. And due to COVID Of course, you know, there’s all kinds of restrictions or whatever but it looked like they had a stage there where they may have like entertainment and stuff like that at some point so we really enjoyed our little one night stay there. We went to this good little restaurant in town. Do you remember the name of our restaurant? It was a little Steakhouse in Bozeman. No, it was but we’ve hosted it on our Facebook I just don’t remember the name of it. Anyways, so we had a nice steak dinner there relaxed that night and didn’t eat in the in the RV which we had been eating on the road for a long, long time and we were kind of happy to see a little bit of civilization after we have been in South Dakota which is very rural, where we were so we got up the next morning and we Yellowstone we hit the ground running got up early in the morning, we couldn’t check into our place we got there about noon we stayed at the the grizzly RV park in West Yellowstone, and really, really nice and great location. For those of you that RV, they’re great big pull through sites and not really very wide across. So you know it wasn’t like really rustic like that but just really nice level spots and nice amenities. A lot of it again was closed because of COVID. But I mean we were like five minutes to the west entrance of Yellowstone Park.

George
Yes, we were within a mile of the West entrance. And as far as for the RV and driving in it was very nice as a straight shot. All their spaces are quite large lengthwise, but like Lisa said, not width wise, but we were very Be happy and it was nice and level, it was easy to level up the RV and we were ready to go.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so we we didn’t, we didn’t hesitate we got right on the road. And you know, before you leave to go to Yellowstone, it’s really good to do a lot of research and I did as much research as I possibly could. But I there’s a couple of things that I wish I really, really would have known before I got there. And although I had printed out the maps, they were really way too tiny to read on a regular eight and a half by 11. paper. And so is $35 to get into the park for the day, I think. But that was for the whole week. Oh, yeah, that was for a week pass. So So our whole car load, we know we took the Jeep got in there, that was no big deal. But when you get there, they do give you the map. So we had just been to Custer State Park. So we you know, figure it out, we need the map, there’s no phone service, don’t plan on your GPS working. And do not plan on making cell phone calls, text messages, I have T Mobile, George has Verizon, none of our phones worked.

George
They were only worked when we got on top of

Lisa RichartHernandez
which was very rare. All sudden, I would get ding ding ding ding ding. And then I tried to respond to the text messages that came in and nothing would come. So if you if it’s important to stay in touch with people, I would definitely let them know before you go into Yellowstone Park that you will not be available by phone or text. Which you know, we want to enjoy the scenery anyways. But so they do have some apps that you can download. And I wish I would have done this before we left. But Yellowstone itself has its own app that you can download. It’s N P S like National Park Service, Yellowstone. And you download that app and it works without Wi Fi. So you literally, of course, download the app before you go into the park or you won’t have the information because you won’t be able to download it. Once you’re in the park. It’s too late. Yes. And so one thing that I really, really, really would have loved to have known ahead of time. Well, there’s a few things on here. When you go to the Yellowstone app, they have what to see they have self guided tours. They have road closures, camping and geyser predictions, different areas, what to do visitor centers and that kind of thing and about wildlife. The thing that was the most important that I wish I would have known about ahead of time, where the road closures, I pulled it up today. We’ve we’ve been we’ve been out of Yellowstone for a few days now. And it’s our first chance to do our podcasts. And I noticed that two major roads are changed, that are closed. So imagine the park map. imagine it being a big circle. And imagine you’re staying on one part of the circle. And you can make it three quarters of the way around the circle. And you’re almost home. But you can’t make it because the roads are closed. So you have to backtrack that three quarters of a circle. That was basically what happened to us when we were touring Yellowstone, the the road closures made it so that when we drove to the farthest point, we had to backtrack the whole entire way. So it kind of made for like double the amount of driving.

George
Yes. And when we’re when we’re talking about these circles, it took us, for example, one of the circles took us three hours to get to the point that we wanted to get to. If we had continued on the circle, we would have probably been home in an hour and another hour, but we had to backtrack. So what would have been a four hour round trip on the circle. Took us six hours to go from one end to the other. Right.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And that’s I mean, and that is like haulin. I mean, we were really we were not taking our time, we really wanted to kind of get an overview of the whole park. We had Tyler and Bailey with us. And I mean we really really pushed ourselves.

George
Yeah, I think the learning lesson here is do some pre reconnaissance and figure out what roads are closed and get a map and

Lisa RichartHernandez
map out your say map out your state. That is the best advice I can give you. Speaking of apps, before we really go into all the different places that we went to the when we went to West Grizzly RV park, they give you a coupon for two free download. It’s called just ahead. It’s just a head app. And we ended up purchasing the app I think it was $30 for all the parks

George
$30 for all the parks for

Lisa RichartHernandez
like Belize for I don’t know if it’s unlimited for whatever. It’s the same kind of thing with the app where you download it so that it but it still tracks your GPS, but you don’t have to You don’t have to have Wi Fi. And it was a lifesaver. And really, really, I think, changed our whole tour of Yellowstone.

George
Absolutely. I think without that app, we would have missed a ton 50% of the heart. And it’s a self guided tour. So obviously, it’s tracking you GPS. And so it knows when you’re in the plains, it knows when you’re wherever you are, and it’ll give you a little story or a little.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, like just up the road to the right is the turn off that you can go to. And you’ll see beautiful waterfalls, and anything and here’s the history of it. And this will be about 20 minutes extra, if you want to take the time to do that turn right at the next thing. And I mean, it was like, Wow, that’s awesome that we have that information. And that’s

George
what I loved that it told you about offshoots off of the main road, and how long that would add to your trip. Which is cool, because then you decide, Okay, now let’s keep going because we want to see this or let’s take it, we took as many as we could. And it was that on I mean, the timing was perfect. And it would also tell you whether it would really link with the road that you’re on, you know, two miles ahead or whether it’s circled around and it came back in the same place you went in. So

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah, because a lot of those little roads were not on the big map.

George
I know one thing I have to say. If I have to say anything negative is the maps they hand do suck. I mean, there’s no other way to put it, they just suck. It’s just a really basic map. I don’t even think we’re but I guess it had Old Faithful where the animals are. It had a handful of things on the map. But had it not been for that app. Like I said, we would have missed

Lisa RichartHernandez
missed home our dogs so much stuff, it was really cool too. Because not only did it it will plays off your Bluetooth so like you got it on your phone or plays on the radio in your car. And then like I think we were listening to music on your phone, and it would like the music would turn down it would be like up ahead is you know, it was like geyser and it would tell you about Old Faithful geyser and then the music would come back on and write really cool like we’re like, wow, this is like really cool trip.

George
You know what it just I just thought of it just reminded me of if anybody’s ever done the big red bus tour, where it tells you about everything that’s going on. And then it says you can get off here and get back on later. Yeah, well, it’s kind of the same. Exactly that Yeah, you can get off this detour here and get back on the road later.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so just a heads up is for all the different national parks and you can use it for the Grand Canyon and the Grand Tetons and I wish we would have had it for the Badlands and for Custer State Park and the other places that are on there. A whole huge slew of them but I highly highly recommend the just ahead app. You can get it I guess in your either it’s for Android or for iPhone.

George
And again well worth the purchase.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so let’s talk about where we went to when we did finally get in. So we decided to hit because of the road closures and I was hoping to get down to the Grand Tetons but those the road there was a there was actually a forest fire from just past old faithful to where we go to get go south on the Grand Tetons so we ended up going to Old Faithful the first the first day which Old Faithful if you don’t know is one of the largest geysers at erupts just about every 90 minutes or so a varies from 50 minutes to 127 minutes. The Russians last for one and a half to five minutes. And it expels around 3700 to 8400 gallons of boiling hot water it gets up to for anywhere from 100 to 200 feet and the temperature of the water that comes out is 170 degrees Fahrenheit. So it’s really you know there’s a big viewing area there that people can stand down around with we so we were decided we were going to be ambitious but we went to go see Old Faithful and there was a scenic overlook so we Okay, so when you get to Old Faithful, they have a list of estimated times of the next eruption. And if you look, if you’d had the Yellowstone app, you could also find that information there. It will tell you so although it’s not accurate, like to the you know, it was like a wrapped up five o’clock, we’re like alright, it’s five o’clock. Why is it corrupted? You know, it’s it’s nature so they, it’s not like they push a button and make it erupt. I think it was like maybe 515 that it actually did erupt. So we did a little bit of standing around waiting for it and watching it. But when we got there, there was like an hour until the next.

George
Okay, I think you can gauge it better by the crowd. If there’s no people there, that means you just missed. The other ones, it starts getting really crowded. It’s everybody’s waiting, because it’s past its time already. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So I guess you could, we’re like the kind of like, I felt like there’s, there’s two kinds of people, when they go visit Disney. It’s the people that know how the park works are the ones that go like log in at 6am to get their tickets for all the different special rides that they want and stuff. And then there’s people who just show up at the gates and wing it? Well, I felt like we kind of showed up at the gates to wing it. And I wish I would have been one of those Disney travelers that had all these things planned ahead. So Had I known this information, I would have been like, No, we need to look on this app and see that the geysers aren’t going to erupt for another hour, we can hit something else in the meantime.

George
Well, we had a very loose schedule, plan, whatever you want to call it. But I’d rather do that than feel like I’m on time or string. Well,

Lisa RichartHernandez
no, but I think that we could have planned it a little bit better had I had more information. Like if I had known about the little thing that shows you what time the geysers arrived, I would have looked at that ahead of time and said, hey, let’s just go hit the prismatic springs before that, or whatever.

George
I got talking. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah. So I’m just kind of mapped things out a little bit better or made better use of our time. So we decided to climb 200 feet up to the overlook. It was only like, a mile. I don’t know, it was far.

George
It was a 200 foot climb in less than a mile. I think it was less than half a mile. It was pretty steep. But it got our blood flowing. We got some exercise. It was a great view. What did you think about it? Before I saw it a lot to sense,

Lisa RichartHernandez
I think I would rather see it from standing down below if I was only going to see it erupt one time, which we did only get to see it one time. I think the reason would be because if you were down below, you would be able to feel the heat from the water coming. And you’d be able to have a better sense of how big it was, from the scenic overview where we walked up to you could see it and it was big. And you could see the little people but it I don’t think we really got the full, I guess feeling of how

George
the full magnitude of its power.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, that’s Yeah, that’s a good description. Yes,

George
yeah, we, I’m glad you felt the same way. I felt like we made a mistake doing that we should have watched it from the ground first and then decided if we wanted to go up. From our vantage point, it was excellent to see. But because of the way the wind was blowing, when when it first erupted, that’s our big cloud of steam, which kind of blew in our direction and blocked a good portion of the actual water shooting out. We got to see it. It was awesome. But it’s just I wouldn’t have I wouldn’t have done it, I would have done it from the ground first and then decided if we wanted to go up on our exercise.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, and we had so much time to spare that. That’s why we chose to take the walk up there. But we did go to all upper Geyser Basin saw some of the other smaller geysers that are around there. It’s just the whole geothermal volcano volcanic, like the land there is incredible. And one of the things we thought of while we were there was like imagine these people that were explorers that just found Yellowstone Park. And the history there just ahead up was really interesting too, because it told us a lot about how it got started and the explorers that found it. And the Indian people, the American Indians and explorers that found it would talk about these like boiling waters and and, you know, eruptions and all this stuff. And yeah, people thought it was like, you know, ghost stories and like Voodoo witchcraft stories, and just none of it was true. But

George
they also told us about the early explorers and the things that they would throw into old faithful to see arrupe

Lisa RichartHernandez
not even just exported, but tourist

George
logs and anything they could throw in there just to see it shoot out of Old Faithful.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah. So Yellowstone is very protected all the things. You can’t even take a stone away or anything like that, because just so many tours go through there. Another thing to mention here is parking.

George
Terrible.

Lisa RichartHernandez
We were fortunate to not have to wait for parking at Old Faithful, which is part of the reason why we went there. And I’m guessing now that I know that the roads were closed pass that if you We’re not staying at the West Gate, then that would be your farthest place to get to so that might have been part of the reason why Old Faithful didn’t have as long of a parking. Yeah,

George
we’d lucked out there. But what was the other one? We will

Lisa RichartHernandez
we will be. Before we went to Old Faithful. We stopped at Grand prismatic springs, which is actually really, really cool and beautiful. But we did wait almost 30 minutes for a parking place there. And this is very common from everything I had right at Yellowstone is more about waiting in line for parking. I was also very, very surprised at how many C class and smaller RVs are driving around the park like all over the place, there is RV parking. I thought it was hard enough to get a parking spot for the jeep. I can’t imagine driving a C class through there. But lots and lots of people

George
out there were all over the roads. Yeah,

Lisa RichartHernandez
I mean, there’s tons and tons of RV is on the road. So grand prismatic Springs is Yellowstone’s largest hotspring. It’s two to 330 feet in diameter, and it’s more than 121 feet deep. It’s located between it midway in midway Geyser Basin. Hot springs are the most common hydrothermal features in Yellowstone. Their plumbing has no constrictions superheated water cools as it reaches the surface sinks and is replaced by hotter water from below. It’s pretty cool. It’s all different colors. That is one thing that we didn’t get to do is there is an overlook that you can go just past the grand prismatic springs and you can hype hike up another 200 feet and see grand prismatic from over from above and I saw the people on the ledge we were too tired to do it the one

George
we should have hiked we didn’t and the one we shouldn’t have hiked we did yes we got that we got it backwards.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah that probably then would have been more worthwhile hike would be to hike up to the top of grand prismatic and not do the hike at Old Faithful. So if I can give you any advice I would definitely say to do that one because it’s it’s it’s really beautiful. It’s blues and oranges. And I mean, it looks so beautiful. You’re like, I wish I could just go jump in there and go swimming like

George
that’s another thing we talked about, you know, with the early pilgrims and going across and all sudden you run across I mean, they’re beautiful. The color of the water is beautiful. And they they just seem so inviting. We just kept joking around and saying imagine that first guy that jumped in and just got boiled in front of everybody and everybody else said, Okay, let’s not do that.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, exactly. The hydrothermal features are habitats in which microscopic organisms survive and thrive. They’re called thermal files, thermal for heat and fall for lover. And they’re too small to be seen by the naked eye. But trillions are grouped together and appear as masses of colors. So that’s what makes the the different colors in these hotsprings.

George
Yes. According to our son, he read it somewhere. yellow,

Lisa RichartHernandez
yellow was in the hottest water. Yep, orange, brown and green are the grow in the cooler waters. So imagine living in near boiling temperatures and hydrothermal features with alkalinity of baking soda, or in water so acidic that it burns holes in your clothing. micro organisms in Yellowstone need these extreme environments to survive. Wow. Yep. So they say use caution and hydrothermal areas down the boardwalk. hydrothermal water can severely burn you never run, push or shove supervise children at all time.

George
There were a bunch of them throughout the park, we actually stopped that one that was off the beaten path right next to the river, the stream. And they’re all very well blocked off. So you can’t jump in it or hurt yourself. But we were able to put our hand in the water that was going into the stream. And I’ll tell you what that sucker were

Lisa RichartHernandez
my finger barely, barely touched the tip of my finger and

George
they weren’t lying.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It was literal. Boiling water is literally coming out of the ground is like the craziest thing. So cool. So we also I mean, we hit a lot of things that day. We we we’ve been so spoiled from when we were in Custer State Park, seeing all the animals. I think when we dropped the kids off, they were like that was our favorite day of the whole Zoo weeks was when we were in Custer State Park and saw all the bison and I mean, we saw so many animals that we saw so many and they were right next to

George
us. Yeah, it

Lisa RichartHernandez
was in the true wild. It was so cool. So we weren’t as fortunate when we were at Yellowstone, seeing the animals but we did end up going through Hayden valley that night, which is another place to Do you see all the bison when the bison walk on the roads and stuff like that, but we got there. I would definitely say if you’re really interested in seeing the wildlife, you need to get up early, early and you need to be there at like 630 or seven o’clock in the morning, or they’re going to be really far out in the fields. If you want to really see them walking on the roads and

George
so on that no, we I met some people at one of the hotels that we set out RV parks. It was

Unknown Speaker
grand when we were in Bozeman.

George
Yep. And they told me that the year that they went, they decided to actually sleep in their SUV. They drove out early from their campsite went to was the name of the where the animals are. Hayden Valley went to Hayden Valley Marbella holdover in one of those parking areas. They all slept for a couple of hours with the kids and the SUV and then got up like a five o’clock in the morning. And they said, that’s the only way to see like, masses of animals. They said they woke up and they were surrounded.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, yeah. And I think that’s what we did in Custer. That was so cool. Because we just kids get up. It’s going to be just an hour. And then five hours later, we got home. But I think that, but for us, unfortunately, the way the roads were closed and stuff like that, even though we got up early, it still took us three hours to get to Lamar Valley, then that really sucked. Because from where we were to Lamar Valley if

George
if everything was open should have only been an hour tops. And it took us well over three hours to just get there.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, cuz we couldn’t take the cut through, right? Yep. Yep. So we had to go all the way around the long way. And so you know, it shows you also on the map, it’s a little bit deceiving. You’re like, Oh, well, it’s 20 miles here. 20 miles here. 20 miles here, that’s an hour? Well, no. People are driving 35 miles an hour. Like, that’s the speed limit. So 20 miles.

George
Yeah. And the speed limit varies tremendously. There’s some areas that go down to like 15 miles an hour. And then what, so that the park is broken up into loops, and one loop says 20 minutes, and you look at the other loop and you go, Okay, that’s the same distance should be 20 minutes. Well, that one could be through the mountains, which is going to take even longer than 20 minutes,

Lisa RichartHernandez
or we did get stuck in a few bison jams, where the bison is literally

George
actually got that picture of the bison traffic jam, which I thought for me was the highlight of this. I actually got the picture that everybody sees,

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah, there’s like 25 cars behind this bison, just literally walking straight down the road. That was pretty terrible.

George
He didn’t care about anything.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so we weren’t like so thrilled by the bison, because we didn’t get as much up close.

George
of close time. They weren’t bigger. They were much bigger. They were big, but I’m just not. We probably just missed it. So don’t take us wrong, but there weren’t as many as far as we could see. And the variety of animals was not there either. So

Lisa RichartHernandez
yeah, I mean, supposedly, Hayden Valley is one of the best places in the park to view wildlife. And they say they have grizzly bears black bears they’re seeing in the spring and early summer. And then large herds of bison, which we did see, but they were way out there. And then coyotes can almost always be seen. Wolves are sometimes seen. Oh, in our just ahead app talked about the different wolf packs that inhabit Yellowstone was really, really interesting. They’re almost like gangs. Wolf packs are almost like gangs, like traveling bags, and they kill each other off and they have their territories and stuff. That was pretty cool information, although we never actually saw them. And then it got to be, I guess, a little bit too dark cross that first day. So we had to turn around after Hayden Valley. So we never got to see Yellowstone like

George
now. We had to like, yeah, we had to turn around and head back. And then we had to drive back in the dark.

Lisa RichartHernandez
We did see a couple elk and they are gigantic. Yeah, they were pretty big. There’s like three elk just sitting in the grass. And you’ll see like when there’s animals ahead, you’ll see these people are pulled over. But I’ve also noticed, like, there be people pulled over over like, there’s no animals there. Somebody must have pulled over and pointed at something and then everybody else pulls over. I wanted to do that so bad.

George
Pull over in some random spot and start pointing at stuff and see how many cars I could get stuck.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, I know. It’s so funny. So did we go day two? No day one. I think we also did The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We did it after we did Old Faithful. We hiked up 200 miles, or I’m sorry, 200 feet. And then so we we couldn’t cut over to Lamar Valley, we decided to hit the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. And there’s a place that you can go to the Lower Falls. And it overlooks the Lower Falls. And it’s a 600 foot. So that’s 6060 flights of stairs. Think of it that way. 60 stories, right. 10 stories each. Yeah. So we went down, and up and

George
down was so easy.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Okay, wait, I was like, state, we were standing at the top. And I was already tired from the 200 feet that we had hiked it. And you know, we’ve been just like, on the go all day. And this guy comes up. And he can just tell that we had this like, I’m not sure if I want to walk all the way down there looks on our faces. And the guy stopped and he said, Listen, I said exactly where you’re standing, wondering whether or not it was worth it to walk down this 600 feet. And he said, let me tell you, I he goes, then we saw like two big guys that were like, clearly out of shape come up. And they said it was worth it. And this guy that was talking to me was you know, he looked like he was in pretty decent shape. He’s like, trust me, when you get down there. It is worth every single step. I just Just do it. And you’ll make it Don’t worry. And I was like, Alright, well, that’s pretty convincing. So sure enough, we walked down. And I mean, I’m not lying. Every step down the way. I was like, I don’t know how I’m ever going to make it back up this hill. And this is crazy. There’s nothing that could be worth seeing.

George
Yeah, I was super steep. And like zigzagging down the hill down the mountain. And you know, at every turn, we could look down and see all the zigzagging we still had left. And I’m sure Lisa and I we never said it to each other. But there was probably plenty of times that I know. I was thinking, you know what? I’m going back.

Lisa RichartHernandez
We stopped some people halfway there that was sitting on the bench like taking a breath. And I was like, was it worth it? They’re like, Oh, yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
You gotta go. Wow.

George
In the end, it was absolutely worth I mean,

Lisa RichartHernandez
we got a ton of pictures. But the photos literally do not do it justice.

George
There’s no way.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It’s like seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time. You know, the Grand Canyon, the other grand real Grand Canyon that you just really you can’t really describe?

George
No, it’s feeling whoever’s been to the Grand Canyon knows what we’re talking about it or anywhere spectacular. You see a million pictures and you think when you get there, no big deal. And then you get there and you go, Wow, pictures do no justice. Well, this is one of those places.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. And it’s like you’d never see it if you haven’t hiked down hikes down to that viewpoint of it. And if you really enjoy hiking, like there’s a whole bunch of other hikes that you can do in that area, too. I think there’s upper falls and it was just an incredible sight, this huge Canyon with this giant waterfall running through most crystal clear water. And I mean, it was just huge in the middle of all these trees.

George
And and the overlook is right at the lip of the waterfall. So the water is coming rushing. I mean, it’s rushing to the, to the edge of the waterfall. And then it’s just this. I mean, what was it 200 foot

Lisa RichartHernandez
waterfall or something like that?

George
Yeah. And then it just falls down into this beautiful valley that is super green and lush because of all the mist off of the waterfall. And it’s just absolutely beautiful. We’ll post some pictures. You got to look at them. But again, until unless you go and see it for yourself. It just I don’t care how many pictures you look at.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah, it says the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone view of the Lower Falls. Scientists think the oldest Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone formed in rock and sediments is about 160,000 to 140,000 years ago. This Canyon was not as deep wide or long as today’s Canyon. past and current hydrothermal activity altered and weakened. The rhyolite making the rock softer the Yellowstone River eroded these weekend rocks to deepen and widen the canyon a process that continues today. The current Canyon begins at the Lower Falls and Enza towerfall Oh the tower falls are also that was part of the part of the park was closed where the road was closed.

George
All these road closures Really? kind of sucks. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
But it was, it was really just just an incredible. Oh, and also, you can’t see that view to get to the bitter end of that trail. Because Tyler and Bailey Of course, they ran way ahead of us, you know, in shape. Tyler runs back up. And he’s like, come on, just wait to see it. He’s like, you have to wait to come around this curve. And then he was like, dada. Ed. I mean, we did I think we stood there for good. 20 minutes at least. Just looking at it.

George
Yeah, we took a bunch of pictures and just admired the beauty of it. It was unbelievable. Yeah.

Lisa RichartHernandez
And then we hiked up.

George
Then we hiked up, we

Lisa RichartHernandez
did about thankful I had my watch on because I really hate when I don’t get to do exercise and get credit for it. So we walked about 20,000 steps that date, which has a lot of steps, a lot of steps. My watch was very happy with me. So

George
that places a must see if you go to Yellowstone, put that on your list. Yeah, faithful is must see. also wanted to throw a little side note on that app. One of the things that we loved about the app was that it told you where if you want if you’re a hiker, Yellowstone is your place. Oh, yep. Oh, my God trails and trails. And it’ll tell you this hike is, you know, 18 miles round trip. It’ll tell you, if you take this trail, it’ll take you to the waterfalls, it’ll tell you everything. But the thing that I found the funniest was that it told us about one lake and it said, all this lake is beautiful. It’s short, three mile walk, lot nice and flat. And it’s beautiful. The only downside is the horrific horror story of mosquitoes that are they’re made out of a horror movie straight out of a horror movie. I mean, that’s what it literally said it was and then we hit another segment, and it talked about another trail. And it also talked about how it’s great fly fishing, if you have a mosquito net for your head, because yeah, they are

Lisa RichartHernandez
vicious. And then there’s the Twin Lakes, there’s two lakes. And it tells you the story about the two different lakes. Because you’ll often see fishermen at these lakes. Unbeknownst to them, there are no fish in either one of these. Because of the bacteria. No fish arrived there. And we drove by later we go drive by guy with

George
guys walking with their fishing poles like here we go and catch some fish.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so that was, that was pretty cool. Um, you know, there’s just so many things to see. We can’t really talk about all of them. I would I think that we’ve kind of touched on the major, major features. A lot of people spend a good week there. If you like to do hiking and things like that. You know, you could, you could definitely plan a different hike each day.

George
We definitely did not have enough time. And I don’t want to hold anything against Yellowstone, because we didn’t have enough time. I think next time we come, we’ll plan and so we can. So I think there’s five loops all together that are interconnected, that connect Yellowstone. And I think if you do one day per loop, you’ll have a great experience we were trying, there’s

Lisa RichartHernandez
there’s only two loops. That was the problem. And I’m looking at the map right now the updated one on the app, because I pulled it up before we started talking and half of the circle, like there’s a giant circle and there’s a cut through between the circle and one hole half of the circle is closed. See, look.

George
Okay, but you got the upper circle, you

Lisa RichartHernandez
got a lower circle? No, but you can’t go all the way around that circle because that roads around that

George
circle because that roads closed. I understand what I’m saying. Now there’s two circles, two or three circles. Plan A day per circle. I don’t know, maybe there’s only three. Maybe I’m thinking a cluster. But if you just got to give it time. We didn’t. We tried to rush it. We enjoyed it. But you know, I just think we rushed it too much.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah. And well, part of the problem was the road, the roads being closed really. Also, because of the forest fires, it was really hazy. So once we got out of Yellowstone, we got into Washington State and all of a sudden the sky was clear blue. And we could see the mountains and the hills in the distance and the green trees and we could actually see things it was like wow, this is incredible view and I was like had there not been the forest fires at Yellowstone we probably would have had some more really incredible views there too. I think that we missed.

George
We definitely missed out on that aspect of it. And when we got to the area where the roads were close, we could literally see the, the forest fires. So

Lisa RichartHernandez
there’s a lot of really good information about the forest fires. And I was really surprised by the landscape, I guess being, you know, used to the trees that we have in either one, you know, even growing up in Michigan, and in the mountains of North Carolina. in Yellowstone, it’s mostly all pines, pine trees, so it’s evergreens. And it’s just mountainsides and roads full of evergreens. And they, the trees, the forest fires actually replenish the whole ecosystem, really, of the park. I mean, the trees die, they fall down, they make kindling at the bottom of this forest, but you’ll see them laying there. And then they, they kind of like burn the whole forest down and revitalizes and the nature needs these forest fires to maintain itself.

George
And we learned all that from the app. And one of the interesting things was, so the last big fire was in 1987, or something like that. And you could see the difference of the trees that have been around pre 87. And the section that burnt down, the trees are tiny compared to the other trees. And you know, that was a long time ago. And these trees are still very small, in my opinion for forest. But what one of the things that was interesting was that the pine cones hold the seeds for the trees. And those pine cones are covered in the inside is. Oh, my God, I’m trying to blank right now. Help me out.

Lisa RichartHernandez
The seeds?

George
Yes, the seeds are embedded in

Lisa RichartHernandez
in the pine cones.

George
Yes. But it’s it’s a hard material that will only fall apart on their fire that has to exceed 135 degrees.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, they learned that. Yeah, a lot of scientific information.

George
And then once the seed is released, then it’ll it’ll start growing. But I thought that was fascinating.

Lisa RichartHernandez
It was also pretty cool. Like just thinking, you know, we had Tyler and Bailey with us, I think that they really learned a lot, just from listening to the app, and the experience of it and writing in the car and things that if we didn’t have that app, we would have just been like, fine trees, you know, lunch or whatever, we

George
would have all been bored to death. Yeah, it’s true between between and highlight sections.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Definitely, definitely. So by the second day, we had gotten up super early did all that driving, we pretty much touched on all the places in the park that we could possibly go to. We all we went to Mammoth Springs, we didn’t even talk about Mammoth Springs. So we did drive down. Because of COVID. A lot of things were close at Yellowstone, we really had our heart set on going to the boiling River. And that was closed, which was a bummer. That’s near mammoth hot springs. And if you’re there and it’s open, you definitely need to try it out. And let me know how it was because it’s kind of a hidden thing. If you get into the town of mammoth, which, by the way, in Mammoth, there is a gas station. And there’s restaurants that have flushing toilets. And you can get a little bit of phone service there. I did get a few messages in and out and mammoth. If you continue through mammoth, probably down this hill. Maybe about five minute drive is where the boiling rivers supposed to be. Again, it was close, but the boiling river is where the hot springs come into the river. And it makes like hot water in this rushing stream, which is pretty cool. It looked like anyways in the pictures and all the research I did.

George
Again, a little heads up would have been nice. Luckily, it was only five minutes out of our way. But imagine if we would have driven an hour out of our way to go to the hot springs and then you get there and they’re closed. Yeah, yeah. What he told us that.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, and I couldn’t really find any of those closures really like in the information that they gave us at the park either. Which was a little little frustrating I guess. Um, and then you know, of course once you’re in there, there’s no Wi Fi so you couldn’t even look it up if you tried so

George
resin resin. I just figured it out. Sorry.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Oh resin is on the outside of the seeds.

George
Yeah, so the inside of the pine cone. resin, that will only Mel and chipmunks, squirrels. None of those animals can get to the seed because they can’t break through the resin.

Unknown Speaker
Yes,

George
I thought that was fascinating. Nature is amazing.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes, that is so true. So mammoth hot springs, that was a really another cool place. It was like all white it almost look like snow. Cuz everything is like burned up and it’s worth it like, travertine comes up from the earth.

George
Right? So the travertine mountain that we were on, has been building for over, you know, 1000s of years. And I think if I remember correctly, it said that every year it develops or adds three inches of travesty cavity travertine, to this mountain. And it was beautiful, but it really looked like snow from far away even from kind of closer look like snow.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah. It’s it just like, it look like sitting on the look of you go sit on the edge of this beautiful, almost like steps to this blue water

George
birdie up. Again, thinking of the pilgrims, and it says everywhere Be careful. Don’t walk over here. Don’t Don’t veer off the path because it looks like solid ground but you could hit a sinkhole and you’re done. And I’m thinking I just I always think of the first guy walking on there and just you know what, what what is like you come across that for the first time ever in history. You’re gonna go and look in the water you’re gonna go in

Lisa RichartHernandez
and suddenly burn themselves I’m

George
sure. Sure.

Lisa RichartHernandez
mammoth hot springs it says is a network of fractures and fissures form a plumbing system that allows hot water from underground to reach the surface at mammoth hot springs. small earthquakes may keep the plumbing opened. The water comes from rain and snow falling on surrounding mountains and seeping deep into the earth where it’s heated. The volcanic heat source for mammoth hot springs remain somewhat of a mystery. Scientists have proposed two sources, the large magma chamber underlying the Yellowstone cult Caldera or a small heat source closer to mammoth for hundreds of years. Shows shown and benek people collected minerals from the mammoth hot springs terraces for white paint. So they used all those, I mean, look like snow was all white everywhere. The Earth. Yeah. And the travertine terraces are formed from lime stone. Calcium carbonate, water rises through the limestone carrying high amounts of dissolved calcium carbonate. And at the surface, carbon dioxide is released and calcium carbonate is deposited, forming travertine, the chalky White Rock of the terrorist says due to the rapid rate, deposition these features constantly and quickly change.

George
So that’s pretty amazing.

Lisa RichartHernandez
That FYI, that is will chair accessible area, there’s a lot of there’s a lot of things that we’re good for. If you are handicap and any kind of way. Yeah, the real chair accessible and and things are getting around. I think most

George
of the places that had the the walkways for they, they’re very considerate about that. Yes,

Lisa RichartHernandez
I don’t know. So yeah, that was our other big thing was was the mammoth hot springs. And then I think we kind of started so the second day, we decided to go the farthest Sylmar Valley, without stopping at any of the places and worked our way back towards the West Gate, which was a great idea. Because there’s nothing worse than working your way far away. And then you’re exhausted and you have that super long drive home, which is what we did the first day.

George
Yes. If the roads are closed, do that.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yes,

George
go the bar doesn’t work for a little annoyed with us because we wouldn’t stop at anything. And we said we’ll hit it on the way back, let’s just get to the end of the road. And then we’ll work our way back. And once we did that, they understood and they got it and and it was actually a great idea.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So we came home a little bit early that day, which is around like dinner time six o’clock, which we had already been there for 10 hours. So it wasn’t like we didn’t spend any time in the park. But the kids were ready for just to be done with all of the nature looking things and

George
we go in in the water at one point because I was

Lisa RichartHernandez
in the river Finally, because I couldn’t

George
river I wanted to see how cold it was and it was damn cold. But there were sections that it was warm. So it’s it’s kind of cool that it’s the same water flowing down this river stream whatever. And it’s warm in one section and freezing cold in another. But we got in there and got that done. Got it off my bucket list. And we moved on.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, so we got back to the town of West Yellowstone, which is a really cute little town. So if you want to get like tourist souvenirs and that kind of thing also has phone service and Wi Fi, which, you know, as as one of my comfort creatures comfort creature comforts that I need because when I’m that far away from my business did manage to sell a couple houses that week while I was there negotiate contracts, but it’s difficult for me when I don’t have Wi Fi so I, I get a little bit like a rat in a cage when I don’t have my wife Why?

George
Yes, you want to steer clear of Lisa when

Lisa RichartHernandez
there’s no wife? Well, because I want to make sure I can take care of my clients and I have an amazing team. So I let them know first thing I’m wearing like, Hey, I’m gonna be out for like eight hours and not have Wi Fi and they they did a great job managing everything

George
for me. They took care of business while you were gone.

Lisa RichartHernandez
But let’s just talk about the pizza. Pizza Place. We went to a wild west pizza for dinner. We were like was pizza. You know, when you’re like craving something for dinner? Like, oh, I want some pizza. That sounds good. Like we want to just like comfort food. We had walked like 20,000 steps that day again, and we were exhausted and it was kind of cold out. And we were just like a good pizza would be good.

George
Yes,

Lisa RichartHernandez
it was like, I don’t know if it was because we were just had been walking with so tired and hungry. But I really truly believe that it would be good pizza any day. It was one of the best pizzas I’ve ever had.

George
I grew up in New York. I’m a pizza kind of sore. And that was damn good pizza. It all the flavors were there. Everything was excellent. It

Lisa RichartHernandez
was like fluffy. Kind of crossed. It wasn’t a thick crust, but it wasn’t like a thin like a New York crust. It had like air in it. And it was really tasty. And the red sauce had it was a little bit spicy and a lot a lot of garlic in it. And then cheese. It was like it was like a it was like a footlong cheese stretch. You know, like really cheesy and

George
the red sauce reminded me of New York. The cheese was awesome. Lots of cheese. There’s some pizza places that skimp on the cheese. I hate that. This pizza was cheesy. The sauce was very good. And all the toppings they had every topping you can imagine. And then some Yeah. Then they have like bison and I can’t

Lisa RichartHernandez
even remember they didn’t have that we had a lot of toppings. But it was it was fabulous. And the cheese breadsticks were really good. And they had cocktails there and I needed a cocktail at that point.

George
And the service was fantastic. Our waitress was awesome. She was on. On Point. Man, we I think we kind of overstuffed ourselves.

Lisa RichartHernandez
I’m just gonna highly recommend wild west pizza in West Yellowstone. As a stop for you or your family or even if you’re without kids, they have a bar section that you have to be 21 or over to go and you can eat pizza in there.

George
So I did do COVID spacing.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Yeah, yeah, everywhere we went. in Yellowstone. Everybody had their masks on when you got out of the car. And um, let’s just say that 600 foot hike with the dang masks on. That did kind of suck. I’m gonna say it.

George
I didn’t have mine on. Yeah. Oh, for the waterfall.

Lisa RichartHernandez
We had our masks on just just kind of weird being outside in the wilderness. And then you’re like walking around with a mask on. But people were very very social distance. And sometimes you’d be on like a boardwalk and people have their mask and you build to be like, Whoa, no, let us all stand far away from each other. And you know, people were Don’t get me started. No, no, but anyways, at least we got to see it and things were opening back up. But

George
yeah, and West. Yellowstone is like Lisa said a very cute little town. It looks like an old cowboy town. gift shops everywhere. Good food, lots of restaurants. We just decided to go with wild west pizza. And then after we stopped ourselves with pizza, we still managed to have room for dessert. I don’t know how but we always find a little space for the Haagen daas ice cream that we had. Oh, yeah. Totally forgot about that.

Lisa RichartHernandez
Did I mention that we walked 20

George
Well, we voided all that out,

Lisa RichartHernandez
voided out all the stuff that we walked that day. So anyways, that was our trip to Yellowstone. We had a great time. And we then the next morning headed out to towards Seattle, which we’ll talk about in our next podcast, which is all around the Seattle area, and whale watching and some other great things On our itinerary,

George
yeah, so stay tuned for that one.

Lisa RichartHernandez
So tune in next week for Seattle maybe even before that.

George
Yeah, I think we were gonna

Lisa RichartHernandez
start knocking on the door. We’ve been seeing so many places and we got to work on on the map next. And then we’re going to the redwood forest. Who knows where else so stay tuned. Follow us on our many travels across the country.

George
Yes, thanks for listening. Take care. Have a good one.

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