Location Taken: Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
Time Taken: October 2012
There’s a lot of merit to going to Yellowstone at the end of the season.
Yellowstone has long been on the “nifty things we should see” list for my Mom and me. But for most of the year, the park is far far far too crowded for us. It is the best known national park in the country, after all, and a lot of people come to see this lovely place every year, especially during the summer.
Which, alas, means long lines of traffic and crowded viewing areas for most of the year.
So, when Mom and I started planning a cross-country camping trip from Seattle to Washington at the end of October, we decided to see if Yellowstone would still be open.
And it was! Barely.
The park closes for the year on November 5th. We were there on the 30th and 31st of October. They already had a few road closures for snow by that point, though the weather warmed up the days we visited enough to start melting the snow.
And the park was, while not empty, the next best thing. There were a few people at every place we stopped, but only a few. The largest crowd was at Old Faithful, about forty or fifty people watching the geyser go off. The seating area could have held hundreds, and does for most of the year.
I had absolutely no problem getting the best view for my photos, and we could spend some time looking at whatever caught out curiosity. Plus we could pull off on the side of the road whenever we wanted, to look at interesting scenery or wildlife.
The campground was even pretty busy, especially compared to the other places we camped that trip. And while the temperature did drop below freezing, that was one of the days where I didn’t end up with frost on the tent!
And the light October snow and the fall coloration leads to some not-so-standard photos of the park, like this one of the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. The ice is just starting to build up around the bottom of the falls, and a lot of the ponds were starting to ice over, but the rivers were still flowing strong and mighty.
