The Lake Yellowstone Lodge is a fantastic place. But old. The lobby areas are terrific. The views of the lake are terrifice. The rooms are very small. Dinner in the dining room was awful and expensive. Breakfast buffet was adequate (certainly better than the dinner). I guess when you're feeding the world and know the tourists won't be coming back soon there is no reason to provide an adequate meal. We found this true at each of the park restaurants visited with the exception of the Snow Lodge dining room. With that out of the way, I can only say the staff was one of the best compared to any hotel or restaurant I've ever visited.
We were booked into the Lodge for two nights, but after the awful dinner and knowing we were headed to Old Faithful in the morning, we found a room at the Snow Lodge. This is a more contemporary hotel and turned out to be a terrific choice.
It started snowing about 9pm at the Lake Lodge and didn't stop until early evening the next day. Parts of the park had over 12". Note the picture at the Continental Divide on the way to Old Faithful. I'm glad we left the bike in Jackson and had all wheel drive to tour.
The entire day was for touring and ogling the park. The Old Faithful side is completely different than the Hayden Valley/Canyon side of the park. There are many books with much better descriptions than we can ever provide about the contrast between classic mountain vistas of pine, aspen and rivers juxtaposed against steam vents, boiling pools of water and multicolored mineral crusts over barren and moonlike landscapes. I'm thinking of the Mountain Men first vistiing the area without the benefit of novels, pictures and Disney movies of Old Faithful and geyser areas. I'm probably the classic tourist. I've seen hundreds of pictures of Old Faithful and thought "that's cool. I want to see that". But, in fact, Old Faithful is a letdown. Been there, done that. Then you start walking around the geyser basin and you can't believe how big an area and how many steam vents/geysers are around. Then you drive north towards Madison and you pass miles and miles and miles of steam vents. And you keep thinking about the mud pots and vents you saw yesterday on the Hayden Valley side of the park. You realize you're on top of a rocket ready to take off.
Again, the Xanterra folks ran a great operation at the Old Faithful Lodge for dinner. But the food is below mediocre. A big disappointment. The historic lodge is an architectural wonder and a must see. Overall, this was a terrific day.
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