Trip 9: We are now booked for a rather short 5-day visit at Yellowstone National Park with reservations in hand for Old Faithful Inn during May 2020. I even called ahead to have a note put on our reservation asking for room #225 we’ve stayed in on nearly half a dozen of our visits. To date, we have spent 36 days spread between 8 trips here at Yellowstone; this visit will push us to 41 total days. You can bet I’m already thinking about a winter return, possibly as early as Christmas 2020.
Update: This trip was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Trip 8: The next time these two faces are seen in Yellowstone National Park, it will have been ten years since we were last in the park and 20 years since we made our first visit back in May 2000. This photo was taken on January 22, 2010, during our second winter visit to the first national park on Earth. This indulgence of being able to visit two winters in a row afforded us another eight days here. That ice-cream-colored beanie was hand-spun and knitted by the woman on my right, and I chose the colorway. I felt it made a bold statement.
Trip 7: Our first winter visit to Yellowstone was for nine days, split between Mammoth Hot Springs and Old Faithful Snow Lodge. We thought the park was going to be enchanting, but we never could have anticipated just how astonishing the place is during winter. There’s a fraction of the number of people who visit during the summer, and the quiet and serenity that accompanies this time of year cannot be understated. We arrived on January 10th, 2009, in time to celebrate our 15th wedding anniversary here in Yellowstone.
Trip 6: Four days over the long 4th of July weekend back in 2007 was enough to refresh our memories of how beautiful Yellowstone Park is.
Trip 5: Only two days were spent in Yellowstone back in May 2005. My mother-in-law, Jutta Engelhardt, is with us again five years after her first visit to Yellowstone, this time in the spring instead of late fall.
Trip 4: It’s May 2004, and we are with our friend Jay Patel on a cross-country road trip that wouldn’t have been complete without a stop in Yellowstone. Over the course of three days in the area, we spent a great deal of time exploring the geysers, mud pots, and wildlife. While you can’t tell from this photo, we also had plenty of snow to make snowmen and snow angels in.
Trip 3: Our only 1-day visit to Yellowstone occurred on July 6, 2003, after being away from the park for three years. We were on our way south after visiting Glacier National Park on the long 4th of July weekend.
Trip 2: Under the guise of bringing Caroline’s mother, Jutta Engelhardt, over to see Yellowstone (because I’m that kind of selfless husband and son-in-law), I was able to convince my beautiful wife of the importance of making a second visit to this corner of Wyoming in the same year. Truth is, I would have sold Jutta to any bidder for the opportunity to visit again, as I couldn’t get our first visit out of my head. This is during October 2000, the closing days of the park. We spent five days on this visit.
Trip 1: Our very first visit to Yellowstone National Park with our friends Ruby and Axel Rieke started on May 14th, 2000. While we had reserved a room for four days, I could have stayed for months. I was smitten with Yellowstone all summer long and schemed to figure out how to justify coming back sooner rather than later. Never in my wildest dreams could I have ever imagined that within 20 years, we’d be making our 9th visit and that we would be able to visit the park during all seasons.