Simply magnificent!

Natural World Heritage Sites are not really my specialty; however when one is as impressive as this it really has an effect. This was WHS number 200 for me and I couldn’t have picked a better place to celebrate the milestone. Not only is the park full of a vast array of natural wonders but its designation as arguably the world’s first ‘national park preserved for the good of the citizens and generations to come’ is what has eventually led to this list of UNESCO’s that I spend so much time on.

We visited over two, very cold, days in late October. The majority of the parks amenities had closed down, this did limit our eating options a little, but it did mean that there were fewer people in and around the park, and many times it felt like we had the place to ourselves. The only time when there were crowds was for the eruption of Old Faithful, but this was to be expected.

The night before our visit we were having dinner at our friend’s home and they stated that the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was their distinct highlight of the park. I’m really glad they did, up until then it was something that I only had earmarked as a ‘maybe’ however we made it the basis of our first day in the park and I was exceptionally happy we did. The two waterfalls at its western end were magnificent and being so close to them you could really feel how the power of the water could have created such an impressive canyon. The fact that there was snow swirling around as we looked out from our perch just added to it. By the time we had made it around to Artist’s Point the sun was beaming and really bought out the near sulphurous colours of the rocks. So thank you Tommay and Doris for such a great recommendation, I hope you enjoy the reviews and can excuse the spelling and grammar mistakes!

Our second day focused on the geothermal features of the park a little more. The distinct highlight for me was getting enveloped in the steam at the Grand Prismatic Spring, enjoying the brief warmth it gave on a bitingly cold day, and being astonished when there was a brief clearing of fog to see the wonderful array of colours in the water. Our trip to the West Thumb Geyser Basin gave us a great view of the Lake at the heart of the park, as well as letting us get up close to some deer and a massive stag that were attracted by the heat from the pools and seemed to revel in penning in us humans by blocking off the board-walks. The presence of so many animals made the whole park more enjoyable. Previous trips to natural WHS have been distinctly underwhelming in regards to animal sightings, but here without even trying we got great views of many different birds and animals, perhaps most memorable was rounding a corner to find a bison in the road that was probably bigger than our car.

After finishing up at West Thumb we headed south out of the park through the magnificent Grand Teton National Park, reminding us that Yellowstone is very much part of the Rocky Mountains.

As with Rome and Angkor 2 days of just seeing the highlights left me wanting so much more, that is why I have no problem stating that this is one of the finest World Heritage Sites I have visited.

[Site 10: Experience 8]