Yellowstone National Park

Slightly out of chronological order, but helpful, a quick description of Yellowstone Park, as we have experienced it.  I am writing this while we are camped at Fishing Bridge, having already been to Old Faithful, unfortunately I have taken about 900 pics over the two days,  that we stayed at the Old Faithful Area, so sorting them into something reasonable has taken too long, which is why the blog is so far behind.
The trouble with going somewhere new is that it is difficult to work out the best way to explore it until you have explored it. Time and again we have got to a place only to find we have totally underestimated the time needed to see things and to work out what there is to see.  We have even left a place, only to find out that we have missed something crucial to that area, this can be quite frustrating, so I had tried very hard to ‘understand’ Yellowstone before we arrived, right back in March when we booked our hotel and campsite.
Yellowstone Park is big, its facts and figures demonstrate that, an area which is over 60 x 60 miles across. It is basically six separate parks right next to each other. They are joined by two loop roads, joined like a figure of eight, each over a hundred miles long. Branching out from them are five roads which take you to the edge, or out of, the park, perhaps another 150 miles of road.
The core of Yellowstone is a ‘supervolcano’, a caldera with walls forming a volcanic basin some forty miles across. Right in the middle of this is a giant lake, one of the largest  in the country.
Most of the geothermal features are on the west side of the Caldera, in the valley of the Firepot River, which runs round the inside edge of the caldera. Central to this is the Old Faithful area, which has the largest collection of geothermal features.
Further East the park becomes more ‘normal’, though spectacular, with combinations of water, trees, mountains, meadows, and animals that make this part of USA such a wonderful place.
So our plan is to spend three nights in a cabin at Snow Lodge at Old Faithful, because there are no campgrounds there to ‘do’ the geothermal bits and then to move East to Fishing Bridge, which is on Yellowstone Lake and explore the rest of the park for a further six nights. The on Monday we shall drive south out of Yellowstone park into the less well known, but just as wonderful, Grand Tetons National Park before we swing back West to finish up at Boise Idaho.
http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/upload/YELLmap1.pdf