What better place to kick off wild spaces than with Yellowstone!?! Yellowstone is the world’s first national park, so it deserves to stay number one.

Yellowstone is beautiful and terrifying all at the same time. Not only does it sit on top of a super volcano, it is also home to over 10,000 additional hydrothermal features and the largest concentration of mammals in the lower 48 states. Everything here can either kill you or knock you over with its beauty. It is a strange experience…. We got a taste when an elk greeted us at our campsite as we rolled in. What a welcome party!

The sheer size of Yellowstone is hard to comprehend. The park alone has over 450 miles of road and is the size of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. We designated a week to camping in the park and we barely scratched the surface. When we first entered the gates, it was still an hour drive before we even were inside the caldera. Camping on the south side of the park, the trip to Lamar valley is a two hour drive. Granted, the top speed in the park is around 35mph, but for good reason as so much wildlife is constantly on the move. The elevation and surrounding mountains also play trick on you. You can leave an area when it’s nice and sunny and arrive to your destination in a rain storm. Some mornings, we woke up to temps in the high 30s only to be boiled alive in the late afternoon sun.

We tried to do a mix of different hiking trails throughout the park. It is amazing how many different types of landscapes there are. One minute you can be in an alpine forest, then the landscape breaks open to a sage brush plain. Driving through the mammoth hot springs area, the landscape looks more like a desert. A scorpion even crossed the road as we passed followed by a coyote a few minutes later. The only thing we were missing was a tumbleweed and a cowboy on a horse to complete the western theme.

Our last night in the park, we were in the Lamar Valley hiking when a storm started to roll in. We got back to the cars right as it opened up on us. Apparently most people don’t like rain, because the entire area went from full to empty within a span of 20 minutes. We waited out the shower and were greeted with an amazing sunset over the valley. We cooked dinner outside on our stoves and had a table set up with camp chairs and blankets. We stayed until after dark watching the valley and even had a herd of bison roll right past our spot (which also proceeded to the road causing a jam of cars). It was one of the coolest experiences we have had while camping.

There is a reason this is the 4th most visited park in the states. There is literally so much to do and see here. We have a lot of places on our “must visit” list, but Yellowstone will also be one that we will find a way back to.