We got up real early the following morning and after an included breakfast at our lodge we set out to explore Yellowstone National Park. It was Sunday, May 17th, three days before the end of our trip. We still had a lot of territory to cover before we reached our final destination in Salt Lake City, so we only had about eight hours to visit Yellowstone before we continued south past Grand Tetons National Park and to our lodge in Etna, Wyoming where we spent the night. Normally, most visitors to Yellowstone will take at least a couple of days to explore the entire park, and during the peak season you would probably need more time because the traffic along the two-lane park road gets heavily congested with tourists, who congregate at all the recommended sites, slowing one down even more. But we were visiting Yellowstone in mid-May, at the very start of the season when kids were still in school and the traffic was not a problem. Even though we could not take an extensive tour of the park, we did manage to see many of the highlights and were blown away by some of the places we saw, especially the area known as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We entered the park via the northern entrance next to the town of Gardiner. Almost immediately we had to alter our driving route because the previous nights it had snowed in this section of Wyoming and a part of the Grand Loop Road that encompasses the park was closed along its eastern side. As a result, I had to change our park itinerary on the fly. This turned out to be a blessing in disguise because not only did we save precious road time, it allowed us to stay longer at some of the sites we visited. From the entrance, we headed over to the Mammoth Hot Springs and Terraces. From there we drove south along the western Grand Loop Road to see the Norris Geyser Basin (and museum), a collection of geysers that are encircled by a wooden trail along its edges. We then cut across Yellowstone National Park along the Norris Canyon Road which connected us to the North Rim Road on the park's eastern side. We managed to stop at all three lookout points along the North Rim Road to view the amazing Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. This had to be the most impressive site in the entire park and I cannot recommend it enough! The first lookout point has a switchback trail that goes all the way to the river at the bottom of the canyon. Joe and I were at first reluctant to go down (I mean, we're both in our mid-60s and that walk back up was a son-of-a-gun), but we decided to do it and were justly rewarded by a phenomenal view of the canyon and its waterfall. The other two lookout points offer views of the canyon looking down. But it's the view looking up from the bottom of the canyon that will make your jaw slacken and utter, "Wow". After our visit to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone we once again crossed the park back to the western side and continued south to visit the Fountain Paint Pots, a hydrothermal area of colorful, bubbling mud pots, bacteria mats and geysers located in the Lower Geyser Basin of the park. From there we drove to see the popular geyser Old Faithful but it was not scheduled to erupt for another hour and a half and we didn't have the time to wait. We exited Yellowstone via its southern entrance and less than 30 miles later we found ourselves driving through Grand Tetons National Park on our way to Etna, Wyoming. What an incredible day of nature viewing, as you will see below.