The gates to Yellowstone are open 24 hours a day. We needed to have an early start in order to see everything I had planned for our first day in the park.
The One Horse Motel had some interesting offerings for breakfast: oatmeal, coffee, packaged mini pastries, Costco chocolate chip granola bars, dum dums, etc. I also picked up our boxed lunches from nearby Ernie’s Bakery & Deli. I actually ordered and paid for the lunches online the week before, and they were ready and waiting for us! I was quite impressed.
We also made a quick stop at Woodside Bakery because I had read rave reviews.
As I recall, we tried the cream cheese croissant, raspberry scone, and huckleberry muffin. They were all quite light, which I am sure was due to the abundance of butter used.
The kids waited with D in the car while I purchased the pastries. When I returned to the car, n asked, “Did you go to Big Gun Fun?”, which was right next door to the bakery. Haha!
The drive into Yellowstone from the west side was amazing. The river was right next to parts of the highway.
There were steam vents, or fumaroles, which made for some mystical scenery.
Our first stop inside the park was the Artists’ Paintpots Trail.
It was pretty chilly in the morning. As soon as I took this picture, the small geyser behind them started gurgling a lot. The kids joked that it must have been angry that I was trying to take a picture of it!
It was surreal to see steam rising everywhere.
Here are the paintpots (notice the different colors).
On our way to our next stop, we also spotted our first bison! We joined a small group of people pulled over to the side of the road to get a closer look!