DAY 13 started our pretty early and we were in Yellowstone National Park about 8 AM. The park is HUGE. Don’t kid yourself to think you can even get to the highlights of the park in half a day. There is so much to see, and the unexpected herds of bison and other wildlife captured our attention and we ended up spending over 2 hours just trying to make it 50 miles to the Canyon Visitor Education Center. We took a quick 40 minutes to check out the exhibits, but we could have spent more time there. We visited the falls and hiked a bit to get to some good viewing areas.

After visiting the falls, we started making our way to Old Faithful Visitor Education Center (OFVC). The 42 miles took us about 2.5 hours to get to with all the stops that we opted to make. Sights and animals captured our attention all along the way. We arrived at the perfect time, Old Faithful was expected to erupt at 4:15 PM give or take 10 minutes. At 4:24 PM (Mountain Standard Time) the geyser erupted. If we had missed this, we would have had to wait until 6:50 PM for the next one.

We started to go to Grant Visitor Center and on our way we noticed a RV had a mechanical issue. While we could fix a broken belt, we were able to give Jason a ride back to the service station at OFVC. It was an 8-mile backtrack, but we felt good being able to help out. After some small talk, we found out he was from the Killingly area of CT. What a small world! We made it to the next visitor center just before it closed. I dipped my feet into the lake. As you can see from the photo, it wasn’t very warm . . . between 40 and 45 degrees.

We spoke with the ranger there who advised us not to go to where we planned on camping for the night, as the road really required a high clearance vehicle, which we didn’t have. We still had a few hours of daylight and he said the time we would be driving through Grand Teton National Park would be great, as animal activity is higher then. He was right. We saw a few beavers and a herd of pronghorns bedding down for the night in an open field. The views of the Teton Mountains were excellent. We managed to get through the main part of the park before it got dark and also found a free place to camp in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. We found our spot, brushed our teeth and went to bed.