Thursday 30 August

West Thumb Basin and Lake Hotel

That night I had splurged and got us a room in the Lake Hotel but as we couldn't check in to 4:30 we stopped of at West Thumb Basin on the way, which was right on the edge of Lake Yellowstone. There were some nice thermal pools here but the highlight was definitely the mud pot hidden in the car park a bit away from the main pools. We hadn't stopped at the main mud pot area, Mud Volcano, and so this also got added to my list of places to see on a future trip.

We then went to the hotel and both had a good clean which was much needed after nearly a week in the backcountry. We had dinner reservations at 8:30 so after a couple of beers we headed to the restaurant. After some nice food, a bottle of wine and a drink in the bar after dinner we finally headed to bed a little drunk! Next morning we headed to a late buffet breakfast which was rather good before making the lazy start to the day even more lazy by getting a hot drink at the Lake Lodge while waiting for our laundry to complete. Reviews on the internet for the hotel were mixed, generally either being great or poor with very little in the middle. Personally I'm more at the great end as the room was nice, if nothing special and both food and the bar were good and reasonably priced. Yes, the room was not cheap but given it's location it was hardly excessively expensive so I'd definitely recommend a stay (at least in the Annex where we stayed and where rooms are considerably cheaper). It also looked like it was much less touristy and crowded than the Old Faithful area which is an advantage in my book.

Friday 31 August

Norris Basin

After our lazy start we headed across to Norris to find a campsite. There were a couple of waterfalls near the road that I'd have liked to have seen but due to a fire we weren't allowed to stop. We soon had a campsite at Norris and we headed to Norris Basin. Here we somehow managed not to get properly rained on and instead managed to have a walk around and see some nice pools and some small geysers. We hadn't realised that neither Norris or Madison had a store so we decided to head to Old Faithful to get some supplies. On the way we had a brief stop to see Gibbon Falls.

Old Faithful and Upper Basin

As it happened this worked out well as we managed to see Old Faithful erupt without too large a crowd. We somehow managed to still largely be avoiding the rain, despite being able to see it elsewhere, so we spent the early evening wandering around a large chunk of the rest of the basin where Old Faithful is. This had a lot more geysers and a lot fewer pools than the other basins we had seen which we were both quite grateful for as I think we were both starting to have enough of pools. Some of the cones of the geysers are very cool. As we were walking back to the car we managed to walk past Old Faithful just as it was erupting again. That evening at the campsite I played with taking some pictures of the moon but unfortunately it soon clouded over. Although it rained overnight we still seemed, somehow, to be avoiding the worst of the rain while we were actually doing stuff.

Saturday 01 September

Lower Basin

Our first stop that morning was Artist Paintpots. Although this mainly consisted of more pools the location was suitably different, being on a hillside with lots of greenery around, that both of us found it pleasantly different to the many other pools we'd seen. We'd struck camp that morning as we planned to head to Grand Teton National Park that day and so we started heading that way, driving the Firehole Canyon Drive on the way and seeing Firehole Falls. Next we drove Firehole Lake Drive, mainly to get a closer up look at a cool looking geyser cone we'd seen from the main road. A couple of pools in this area were more like Lakes which was a little different from the other areas. Next we stopped at Fountain Paint Pot. This was very very touristy and not too different to other areas we'd seen so we didn't stopped too long.

Black Sands Basin and Upper Basin

Although Black Sand Basin was another mainly pool area it was worth the stop as these were some of the most colourful pools we'd seen. We then stopped off at Old Faithful again partly for practical purposes and partly to see part of the basin we'd missed the evening before. Everything up to this point had taken a bit longer than we had expected and so were on our way to Grand Teton a bit later than expected.