Yellowstone is simply amazing:

First of all there's the scale. It's about 65 miles by 55 miles overall. It's just short of 3,500 square miles. To give an idea of what this means, Dorset is just under 1,000 square miles.

Next is the fact that it's largely unspoilt. Hardly anyone lives here, apart from Park staff, and most of those are seasonal. There are only about 250 miles of surfaced roads. There are numerous paths for walking, cycling and horse riding, but in effect the great majority of the park is untouched.

The Park is mainly grassy plateaus and wooded mountains. Most of it's above 7000ft. The surface of Yellowstone Lake is at 7733ft, and several peaks are above 10,000ft. This means there's a lot of snow about for much of the year, and roads are closed. It also means lots of splendid waterfalls.

The centre of the park is the caldera of an active volcano. The Park has half of the world's geothermal features. Apart from the famous areas such as Mammoth Springs, Norris Geyser Basin and of course Old Faithful, you can see spurts of steam coming out of the ground almost anywhere.

As well as the scenery there's the wildlife. Bears, elk, moose, bison, wolves and coyote are the 'heavyweight' attractions.  There are numerous small furry things, and birds of all sizes up to Bald and Golden eagles.

We took so many pictures that I've split them  up into four separate sections. As usual each one starts with our diary jottings.

I've added a link here, and on each of the four pages, to the National Parks Service map of Yellowstone. This will open in a new window. I can't make the pdf file any smaller, so it may take a while to load.