Prismatic Spring, Yellow Stone National Park, ISO100, 16mm, f/10, 1/320sec

Yellowstone is one of my bucket list items for travels. It’s the world’s first national park, known for its wildlife and colorful geysers, hot springs. Instead of repeating the wikipedia facts, here are some quick pros and cons as I observed on the first day.

Pros – Road condition is great, park is very well maintained.
Cons – Maybe it’s too developed, there are plenty of lodging, cafeteria and way too many tourists, particularly at the renowned sites such as Old Faithful, and the main geyser basins. Since the geysers are easy to visit on foot, the demographic of tourists here are significantly older than we saw in Glacier National Park. It might be very family and kids friendly but we arrived just after labor day weekend, so we didn’t see that many children.

Nevertheless, it’s just quick observation. We did our first day 10-hour park reconnaissance by driving from the Northern Entrance, Mammoth Hot Spring toward the south through the Upper Geyser Basin, and eastward to the West Thumb Geyser Basin, back north along the Yellowstone Lake, and spent the sunset hours at Artist Point in the Canyon.