Summer in Yellowstone - Sunday Afternoon & Canyons Lodging

Other posts in this series:
Summer In Yellowstone - Getting There
Summer in Yellowstone - Sunday Morning
Summer in Yellowstone - Sunday Afternoon & Canyons Lodging
Summer in Yellowstone - Mammoth Hot Springs and the Lamar Valley
Summer in Yellowstone - The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone
Summer in Yellowstone - The Last Days

After lunch we continued taking our time along the main road of the park.  Yellowstone is so massive and since I'd only visited in the winter on previous trips, I hadn't fully understood how large it is.  In terms of square miles, it would be our 3rd smallest state, larger than both Rhode Island and Delaware!

Much of the park is within the rim of a super-volcano and the area is unique in its thermo-geological properties.  Parts of the park are heavily forested while others are home to hot springs and still others are rocky and barren.

We stopped at the Midway Geyser Basin which features a number of smaller geysers and pools as well as the multi-colored Grand Prismatic Spring (GPS).  Unfortunately the GPS is best photographed from above as it's difficult to get the correct angle at ground level to capture the colors.  And, of course, it's not like you can wade into the middle of it!

Grand Prismatic Spring

We took pictures as best we could but they really don't do the area justice.  We hopped back in the car and slowly made our way to the Canyon base area, where our lodging was located.  There was a bit of a line at the check-in.  Being so early in the season, a number of the staff members were still new at their jobs and thing were moving a little slowly.  But we weren't in any hurry so it didn't matter too much to us.

We were staying in a couple of the frontier cabins which are located behind the Canyon Lodge and dining hall.  The parking lot was paved and nice but as soon as the road took a turn behind the lodge, all that changed.  Numerous potholes and much of the asphalt had been replaced by gravel.  Anyone driving a fancy sports car would bottom out repeatedly and even our rented sedan scraped bottom a few times.

Our cabin was pretty much as advertised.  No TV, no Wi-Fi, small, but very clean.  The bathroom featured a shower and toilet, with the sink out in the room.  These cabins were arranged as two sets of duplexes, with a common deck area.  At least in our cabin there was a connecting door to the other half of the duplex.  As our room had two beds I suspect that the other room had a queen for couples to stay in and that families might choose to rent both halves of the duplex and open up the connecting door.  The two beds we had seemed to be larger than twins but I'm not sure if they were actually full-sized.  It would have been very difficult to sleep two adults in one of them.

The décor is dated but clean.  The blankets were warm and the heat worked just fine.  We were glad for that because our first night we went to bed with the windows open.  It had been a gorgeous day though we knew a rainstorm was coming and the temps would drop.  Well, drop they certainly did.  C got up about 5 am to shut the windows as we were each shivering under our blankets. There's no air conditioning in the cabins but it's easy to forget you're at 7700 feet above sea level and nights cool off quickly.  There are no hair dryers provided and I was glad I'd called ahead to check on that.  There are only a couple of accessible plugs in the room, one over the mirror over the sink and another over by the desk.  Seems a little odd there's not one between the two beds for an alarm clock but considering how old these buildings are, I guess I shouldn't be surprised.

We had dinner each night at the Canyon Lodge, either in the cafeteria or the dining room.  The first night in the dining room it took forever to get our meal, mostly because both the waiters and the kitchen staff were all still learning their jobs.  After that we ate dinner at the cafeteria.  But mornings we ate in the dining room and things seemed to flow a little better.

All in all we thought the Canyon area was a great place for a base of operations.  The main roads in Yellowstone are somewhat like a figure-8, with Canyon being right at the center point.  We were able to essentially take day trips on a piece of the loop and end up back where we started the day.  I'd first thought of staying in West Yellowstone but I'm glad C convinced me to stay in the park. While we didn't earn any frequent guest points (the horror!) it meant a whole lot less driving each day since it's a good 45 minutes from West Yellowstone into the center of the park.

Oh and how can I forget the bison?  When we saw our first bison as we were driving from Teton to Old Faithful, C got very excited and of course we had to get photos.  I was a little amused because, having been to the park before, I knew what was in store for us the rest of the week.  They're still amazing creatures, with those massive heads.  I'd only seen them with their full winter coats which makes them look even larger.  This time of year they were shedding and they'd rub against trees trying to slough off those winter coats.  Sometimes I felt sorry for the young trees as those bison were rubbing with such force.  Still, a bison walking down the road is not something you see every day and even though we soon got a bit tired of them, they are certainly something to behold.