Posted on Thursday, 4 December 2014

My wife and I have explored all the National Parks in the north of England and Wales, and so thought we would be ready for the scale of Yellowstone National Park.

However, the size of this legendary place – often cited as the first ever national park – is quite astonishing, covering an area of 3,457 square miles. That's equal to about six or seven UK national parks put together!

Last September, after flying into New York for a little sightseeing, we took an internal flight to Denver, Colorado, where we picked up our ‘Class C' recreational vehicle (a Class C is 20-30ft long).

Hiring an RV in the USA is fairly straight forward for a UK citizen. We reserved our RV from Britain using a credit card – which along with the fee was also debited with $200 for the deposit. They just needed to see the plastic part of my UK license on arrival at the office.

I had driven smaller motorhomes before, but the RV I picked up was substantially longer and wider than I was used to. However, I soon got to grips with it. The traffic in and around Denver was fairly relaxed – at least compared to that of crazy New York, where I would not fancy driving a normal car, let alone an RV.

The most important thing to remember for a UK driver in the USA – is to drive on the right hand side!

Having seen photos and watched videos of such glorious locations as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and Lower Yellowstone River Falls, we were very excited about our trip.

Lower Yellowstone River Falls

Since the drive up to Yellowstone from Denver is well over 10 hours, we stopped for the night at an RV park outside Yellowstone and settled into what would be our home for the next few days. Our ‘Road Bear RV' had plenty of space for two people – and also featured a kitchen with burner and fridge, along with a shower and flushing toilet.

We had satnav on board but we could have located Fishing Bridge RV Park easily enough without it – the road is very direct and well signposted. We edged part of the beautiful Yellowstone Lake before entering the RV park. It took us longer than planned to reach it because we ended up stopping to look at the stunning vistas punctuated occasionally with bison or elk – although we didn't spot any grizzly bears.

Yellowstone Lake

After checking in at Fishing Bridge RV Park and enjoying some lunch on our allocated picnic bench, we drove up towards Lower Falls, around half an hour away, then laced up our boots and headed off into Yellowstone. We joked about encountering a hungry grizzly bear – but in all seriousness did take a canister of bear spray with us (basically a pepper spray that irritates a bear's eyes, nose, mouth, throat, and lungs).

Lower Yellowstone Falls was breath-taking – and with so many great viewpoints we took some wonderful photos. This location also offers amazing views down the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, which runs for about 24 miles.

On the way back to the RV, as the sun set, we got our first glimpse of a grizzly bear – it was a long way off but rather fantastic to see prowling around in the long grass. It didn't look like the sort of animal that might need to be blasted with pepper spray; indeed, my wife thought it quite cuddly!

It's worth mentioning that fatalities from bear attacks are rare in the USA, but hikers should always exercise caution. Campsites located in areas with many bears (including Fishing Bridge) are called "hard-sided" – i.e. tents are not allowed since they offer no protection against bears!

After a comfortable night in our RV we rose early to explore the Old Faithful Geyser – the best known of Yellowstone's numerous geothermal features.

The geyser is one of the most predictable geysers in the world, erupting every 45 – 125 minutes. We arrived at the location just at the tail end of an eruption, but only had to wait about an hour for another to take place. Such a strange thing to witness – a jet of boiling water shooting up to a height of about 50 metres – it seemed to have its own personality or intelligence, as if it was an animal rather than a strange geographical phenomenon. We were so impressed we stayed for the next eruption too; we knew were unlikely to come back here, so we were going to make the most of it!

Over the next days we enjoyed a number of fantastic hikes on which we spotted two more grizzlies (at a distance) and even tried a little fishing on one of the smaller lakes. We caught some kind of trout and took it back to the RV for our evening meal. There was a primal pleasure in catching and cooking our own food – although the comfort of the modern RV made us feel less like authentic cave people!

Fishing Bridge RV Park itself was a great place to relax. We continued to enjoy some wonderful outdoor dining on our picnic bench; a local store had a good range of supplies which we could cook on the RV's stove.

It was funny to think that such a relaxing place was actually situated over a supervolcano called the Yellowstone Caldera; if it decided it was time to erupt again our holiday would come to a very abrupt end.

Thankfully though, the Yellowstone Caldera stayed quiet.

As our time in Yellowstone drew to an end, we took stock of our American holiday around an evening campfire, watching the sparks fly up into the star spangled sky. As much as we enjoyed New York, it was America's Great Outdoors that really took our breath away – and we agreed we couldn't imagine a greater piece of outdoors than Yellowstone National Park.

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