Roadtrip to Yellowstone National Park

It all began in 2nd week of May. Last weekend of May was a long weekend so we all wanted to go for a 3-4 day trip. After discarding most of the IDEAs, we decided to conquer Yellowstone. As always, Anpya (Anup) took the initiative and after gathering enough info booked the hotel in West Yellowstone city which is situated at west entrance of the park. As the last weekend was approaching, everyone was becoming more and more enthusiastic and at the same time anxious!? Weather.com was showing snow and storms at West Yellowstone. L Looking at bad forecast, Sachin (Dubey) pulled out, making room for Libs (Libu) to ride along. But forecast could not override the morale of geared up voyagers!
22nd May Thursday: Everyone came early from office in the hope that we will start before the heavy evening traffic. But, after packing all the stuff, feeling gas in the car (http://www.jeep.com/en/2008/commander/), we managed to get away from Redmond at around 6.30pm. After hitting the freeway, Anpya decide to let me drive! Yahoooom… my first long trip in US and first driving experience on trip after getting licensed!! I was so over enthu (:P) that mamu (Police) caught me while over-speeding (luckily didn’t get any ticket)!
We had ordered dinner in “Top of India”, Spoken. The hotels closed around 10 pm, but Papaji (Mr. Paramjit Singh) waited till 10.30 just to give the parcel. After seeing us standing outside the car and trying to eat the food, he opened the restaurant and served the food, water and most importantly humanity!! We all felt so proud to be Indian. This was the really touching memorable moment of everyone’s life J
Then, Paddy (Padamrag) took control over the wheel and surpassed Idaho and most part of Montana on I-90 within 4 hours of dark w/o a break! We, except Paddy and Chandoo (Karthik), woke-up at Gas station in early morning.
23rd May Friday: Anup drove through rest of the track straight to the Visitor Center of the park. The weather was surprisingly good so instead of going to hotel we decided to go in to the woods! We decided to cover the north loop of the park in Day 1.
On one of those magical turns on the bank of Norris River, we saw vapors coming out of the ground! Every one rushed to the first geyser, Terrace spring. That was just a trailer of what we saw in that day. We saw hot springs, geysers, like steamboat, fountain, diamond and many more in famous geyser basin named “Mammoth springs”. As we moved ahead, we saw many cars standing on both sides of the road. Bhavin got out of the car and shouted “abe Bhaalu hai”, we jumped out of car and joined the junta to take a glimpse of Grizzle bear. I think that bear was also enjoying the show, was giving different poses to the photographers. On the way back, there was long queue of cars lead by Police car. When we moved close we saw that bunch of bison doing Rasta Roko. Police was trying to safeguard all the cars! After coming back to the city, we found a Chinese restaurant; it was full of Desis! The sole cause was to get rice J. After returning to hotel, planned for the next day and don’t remember when fell asleep….
24th May Saturday: We decided to go to the South loop and the first stop was “Old Faithful Geyser”. As name suggests, this geyser erupts at fixed interval. We came to know that it was going to erupt in about half an hour so we wandered around and saw different springs and geysers such as castle geyser, giant geyser, grant geyser, etc. When we came back there was huge crowd all around the old faithful. Suddenly, water started to come out with amazing impulse. It was a phenomenal geothermal activity exhibiting natural fountain! After this awesome event, we went ahead to Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It was a beautiful drive, on the right hand side, there was Yellowstone Lake which was in half frozen state! The break was inevitable. One more photo session J
When we reached to the lower falls of Grand Canyon, we were just amazed to see that beautiful sight J it was one of the best places I have ever been to! We screamed like anything, clicked like anything… no one ever wanted to leave that place, we also went to the upper falls… snapped those beautiful moments!
That night we decided to go for camping. It was around 10 pm when we reached the camping place and took out all the accessories required for the tent, every one took their places, car was parked such that we get some light for the action... we started build the tent but… suddenly rain started to pour down heavily L we were about to make it happen but the inside of tent was filled with water. Sadly, with heavy hearts we decided to put closure on this tent project. [:D] Undoubtedly, it was the best team exercise I have ever experienced!!
25th May Sunday: Due to our over enthuness, we had covered most of the spots in just two days (normally ppl take 4-5 days to cover that), so we decide to Visit Grand Teton National Park, towards south of Yellowstone. As we had expected even this park was having very good wild life and we got very close look of Bison, Moose, etc.
At one of those beautiful spot, there was a small ground on the banks of Madison River. Till now we had enough dose of wild life, so it was our turn to turn wild. [:D] We played soccer there in full of dirt, mud, grass, etc. On the journey back to hotel, we played “Antakshari” in the car. After coming back to Hotel, we played “Tin Patti”!!!
26th May Monday: This was the last day of the trip. We visited the Discovery Center where they keep injured Bears, Wolfs and other animals. We were lucky to be there when a bear show was going on for kids! First they asked few kids to hide the food for bears in captivity. Then they brought 2 bears to that place, those bears searched for the food and ate!
To add up to the spice we had One-word wonder Libu and Tin-Patti king aka Cutie pie Ashwin with us! Chandoo as always was the punching bag and Paddy showed some “Chulla”(masti). These guys made our journey into ROADTRIP! Truly, it was an experience of the lifetime!!!