Our Day in Yellowstone National Park

We left Lethbridge, Alberta early on a Monday morning, driving straight to the Coutts border crossing and into Montana. Our destination was Yellowstone National Park. The six and a half hour drive took us past rolling, unending fields and picturesque mountain ranges. Our initial plan was to spend the night at Three Bear Lodge and hit Old Faithful the following morning, but we made such good time on the road that we decided to shift things and visit the park the very same day. Since we were too early for our hotel check-in anyway, it gave us the perfect excuse to get a head start and clear up our schedule for the next morning.

Making our way to the West Entrance, we were shocked to find out how much things had changed since our last visit three years ago. Prices had driven up considerably for non-US residents.** Swallowing our sticker shock, we proceeded straight toward Old Faithful, passing major park attractions like the Fountain Paint Pots, the Midway Geyser Basin, and the Grand Prismatic Spring, with plans to loop back and explore them on our way out of the park.

At Old Faithful, the steam billows constantly, quietly. Water collects slowly in an underground reservoir we can’t see, bubbling and pressurizing into a space that will eventually no longer hold it. When this pressure becomes too much, Old Faithful erupts, shooting 3,700 to 8,400 gallons of boiling water up to 184 feet high for 1.5 to 5 minutes, roughly every 90 minutes, give or take 10 minutes. A projected daily schedule is easily accessible on the park’s official website via the National Park Service platform.

Steam, color, and raw geothermal power, Yellowstone’s thermal basins are like nowhere else on Earth. The park holds about half of the world’s geysers, and these basins sit on top of one of the largest active volcanic systems on the planet. The heat driving all of it comes from a magma chamber miles below your feet. Being here feels otherworldly, a reality that has captivated travelers since 1872, when Ulysses S. Grant signed Yellowstone into law as the world’s very first national park, primarily to protect these bizarre, bubbling hydrothermal wonders from commercial destruction.

Just north of Old Faithful in the Midway Geyser Basin sits the crown jewel of this supervolcano: the Grand Prismatic Spring. Originally noted as a boiling lake by fur trappers in 1839, it was officially named by the Hayden Geological Survey in 1871 due to its staggering, prism-like coloration. At roughly 370 feet across and over 120 feet deep, it stretches wider than a football field and runs deep enough to swallow a ten-story building. As the largest hot spring in the United States, it is famous for its bright, rainbow-colored rings caused by heat-loving bacteria called thermophiles. You can view it up close via the Midway Geyser Basin Boardwalk, which we did, or take a short, 1.2-mile round-trip hike to the Grand Prismatic Overlook Trail for an elevated view of the entire spring. We skipped the overlook hike, but seeing pictures of it from that high vantage point, I think we might have missed out.

The surreal kaleidoscope of colors isn’t a geological trick, but a biological map of extreme temperatures. The deep sapphire center is near boiling at 188 degrees Fahrenheit, far too hot for life to survive, which allows the pure water to scatter blue light back to your eyes. As the scalding water flows outward and cools toward the edges, distinct rings of heat-loving organisms called thermophiles take over. Trillions of these microbes build vast microbial mats, with different species thriving in precise temperature zones. The brilliant greens, yellows, and deep rust-oranges reveal a living thermometer spreading across the basin floor, acting as a vivid window into the ancient volcanic furnace humming just beneath the crust.

From here, we looped back north to the Lower Geyser Basin to see the Fountain Paint Pots. When you visit this area via the popular 0.5-mile Fountain Paint Pot Boardwalk loop, you are treated to a perfect sampler platter of the four main types of geothermal features found in Yellowstone: hot springs, geysers, mudpots, and steaming fumaroles.

The highlight here is the namesake Fountain Paint Pot itself, a massive, thick cauldron of acidic mud that bubbles, burps, and spits like a boiling pot of clay paint. The consistency changes completely depending on when you visit, running thin and watery with early summer rains but turning thick, gloopy, and highly unpredictable by late summer. The science behind it is wild: underground volcanic gases like hydrogen sulfide give the basin its signature rotten-egg aroma, and when mixed with water, they create a highly acidic stew that literally dissolves the surrounding feldspar rock into rich kaolinite clay. Right alongside the mudpots, the boardwalk winds past Silex Spring with its clear blue overflow, roaring steam vents like Red Spouter, and active geysers like Clepsydra, which has been erupting almost constantly ever since a major earthquake shook the region back in 1959. It was the perfect, dramatic finale to our first day on the volcanic tableland before finally turning back toward West Yellowstone to check in for the night in our cozy room at Three Bear Lodge.

In The Know

Non-US residents might be in for some sticker shock with the newest pricing structure centred around 11 of the National Parks –

Acadia National Park

Bryce Canyon National Park

Everglades National Park

Glacier National Park

Grand Canyon National Park

Grand Teton National Park

Rocky Mountain National Park

Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks

Yellowstone National Park

Yosemite National Park

Zion National Park

Non-U.S. residents aged 16 and older face updated national park fees starting in 2026, which include a $100 per-person nonresident fee at 11 top national parks in addition to standard vehicle entrance fees of $35.

Alternatively, international travelers can purchase a $250 America the Beautiful Non-Resident Annual Pass, which provides access to all federal recreation sites for a full year and covers both the standard entrance fees and the nonresident surcharges for the pass holder and up to three additional adults in the same vehicle.

America the Beautiful Non-Resident Annual Passes are available here at the National Parks Website.