Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Park - 9/2015
Once again Rebe and I were off on another adventure and wanted to share a few images with you. Here's the album, hope you enjoy. We miss you all.
The images are in the order of the trip, minus the first 13 which I picked out as "special." And I apologize at how lengthy this email is, apparently we did more than I remember, I completely understand if you just want to see the pictures.
Our itinerary:
*The links are to pics of the areas referenced in the paragraphs.*
Tuesday - Arrival into Sal Tlay Ka Siti (or Salt Lake City, that's Book of Mormon reference) around lunch time and of course that means it's time for food and local beer. Seems that every town now has a few breweries and most of the times these places have great food too. After lunch we stopped quickly by the Salt Lake City Mormon Temple and the Capitol Building of Utah for few quick pictures. Then it was time to hit the road up interstate 15 which travels through northern Utah and Eastern Idaho, we stopped for ice cream in Idaho Falls at Reed's Dairy (highly recommend, and on another note we surprisingly ate a lot of ice cream on this trip). The area is known for its huckleberries and huckleberry ice cream.
From there we started heading east towards Wyoming and drove through Teton Pass and stopped of in Jackson's Hole (somehow the "'s" was dropped) for dinner...more beer and bbq at the Snake River Brewery and Restaurant. Then an evening drive past the Grand Tetons in marvelous sunset colors and to our humble abode at the Jackson Lake Lodge. |
| Jackson Lake Lodge |
Wednesday - We started our day with a morning float down the Snake River with Solitude Scenic Float Trips, one of the few float operators that actually operates inside Grand Teton National Park; other companies do this same kind of trip but the views are not as good for the sections of the river they may float down.
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| Tetons from Snake River |
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| Tetons from Snake River |
After the peaceful river float we headed over to Jenny Lake to hike up to Inspiration Point, and to be honest it's a decent hike but YOU CAN'T SEE THE TETONS.
(View from Inspiration Point)
From Inspiration Point we headed back into Cascade Canyon, now this was definitely worth the hike and not much of a elevation change from Inspiration Point.
(Cascade Canyon)
We then headed further south to check out Teton Village, one of the ski resorts surrounding Jackson. We got word of a place at the top of the ski hills that served awesome waffles, the ski resort has a whopping 4139' vertical climb and a maximum altitude of 10,450'. So of course we rode the tram up and had more than a couple waffles, and yes they were amazing.
(At the top of Teton Village)
The day didn't end there, between Teton Village, WY and Moose, WY there is a half paved half dirt road on which there is a LOT of animal traffic. Including elk, deer, owls, black bears (at least 4 or 5 and one walked in front of our car! The picture of that one was so bad I'm ashamed to show it to you...), a mother moose with 2 calfs and a bull moose with great antlers.
Thursday - This was moving day, where we would leave the beautiful Grand Teton National Park for the weird, yet majestically beautiful Yellowstone National Park. Before we left Grand Teton, we asked our waiter about other trails in the area that were worth the hike after we were slightly let down at Inspiration Point the day before. He recommended quite a few, so many in fact I can't remember most of them but we decided on a hike that heads to Grand View.
(As seen from Grand View)
The main trailhead is down an unmarked marked road off the main road in the park, and unlike the hike to Inspiration Point (IP) there was NO ONE on this trail whereas the trail to IP had loads of people (as in never alone for more than 1 minute). The trail wasn't quite overgrown, but you could tell it does not get the traffic that a lot of the other trails receive. All in all, best trail in the park Jenny Lake was nice but Grand View was just mind blowing. Rebecca and I actually sat at the top for 15-20 minutes, and yes Rebecca is holding a can of bear spray... 😀 Didn't want to be eaten, bear spray is like pepper spray but with a 30 foot range.
(Rebe with her bear spray atop Grand View)
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| Sylvan Pass |
We didn't really have a plan going into Thursday for Yellowstone so we decided to basically just wonder around and "see" more of the park. After a short conversation with a ranger, we decided to head off to the east entrance and we are so glad we did. The road we took lead us most of the way around Yellowstone Lake and then into more previously burned forest (Yellowstone is notorious dry and prone to fires from lightning strikes) and finally into this cavernous area called Sylvan Pass and pictures do not do it justice. Oh and I can't forget the random bison (not buffalo) in the woods, apparently the bulls just roam when it is not mating season and this one was a LOOOONG way from the rest of the bison we saw.
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| Random Bison |
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| Mud Volcano Area |
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| Hayden Valley |
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| Grand Canyon of Yellowstone |
Friday - Before the trip we scheduled the "Circle of Fire" tour provided by the park, this tour is provided in a 1970's bus (could be 60's, it was a manual 4 speed). The tour visits the lower loop of the park, where you can see The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone along with its Upper and Lower Waterfalls, Yellowstone Lake, West Thumb geyser Basin, Old Faithful and the Fountain Paint Pots (in that order). The lower loop of the park is 96 miles around, as you can imagine traveling 96 miles in a bus while sightseeing can take a while and of course the tour last from 8am to 4pm. It is hands down the best way to see the 'highlights' of the park and of course to be with a tour guide that can answer questions and tell you all about the history of Yellowstone.
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| Lower Waterfall in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone |
After the tour ended Rebecca and I of course couldn't waste any time in seeing more of the park, and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was very close to Canyon Lodge (where we were staying) so we drove over there and for more sightseeing and a bit of hiking over to Sublime Point.
This was another hike with the bear spray and another trail where we really did not see a lot of people (3 in total), according to our tour guide the majority of Yellowstone tourists do not really leave the road and miss out on some of the hidden treasures of Yellowstone. Rebecca and I tried to get off the beaten path as much as we could but there are only so many hours in the day. After the hike to Sublime Point, the sun was still up and we thought it would be a good idea to hang around the canyon and even wait until the stars came out, even hike down INTO the canyon and wait for the stars...and of course the clouds came out and ruined all that (you can see the waterfall in the lower section of the image) though we did have dinner at the bottom of the canyon and enjoyed the sounds of the waterfall. We then hiked back up the canyon in the pitch black darkness using our cell phones as flashlights.
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| Old Faithful |
This was another hike with the bear spray and another trail where we really did not see a lot of people (3 in total), according to our tour guide the majority of Yellowstone tourists do not really leave the road and miss out on some of the hidden treasures of Yellowstone. Rebecca and I tried to get off the beaten path as much as we could but there are only so many hours in the day. After the hike to Sublime Point, the sun was still up and we thought it would be a good idea to hang around the canyon and even wait until the stars came out, even hike down INTO the canyon and wait for the stars...and of course the clouds came out and ruined all that (you can see the waterfall in the lower section of the image) though we did have dinner at the bottom of the canyon and enjoyed the sounds of the waterfall. We then hiked back up the canyon in the pitch black darkness using our cell phones as flashlights.
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| Photo ruined by clouds |
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| Grand Prismatic Spring |
Saturday - We had been going at it pretty hard for the last few days and we decided it was safe to sleep in a little bit, so we did and when we got up we went to have breakfast at the lovely Lake Hotel. Friday was spent on the bus doing the Circle of Fire Tour, but there were places that the bus didn't stop or just didn't spend enough time at some of the locations. We started at the West Thumb geyser basin (you can skip this one), then over to Old Faithful again because there are so many springs and geysers at this location that we barely had enough time between lunch and the anticipation of the Old Faithful eruption. After spending time there we drove over to the nearby Black Sand Basin and then to the 3rd largest hot spring in the world, Grand Prismatic Spring.
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| Grand Prismatic Spring (courtesy Wikipedia) |
Upon leaving the Midway Geyser Basin we headed back to the hotel for power nap before our evening animal tour up in Lamar Valley. I couldn't get over how vast the valley was and also there was another area called Little America which is even more breathtaking but sadly there are not a lot of safe areas to pull over while on the main road in this area. While on the animal tour there were of course bison causing a traffic jam, black bears just off the road, pronghorn antelope and a GRIZZLY BEAR (yes there is a bear in the image, it's the black spec in the center...). Our guide had a 40x spotting scope (more zoom that my piddly camera) and the bear was still a spec but we could see him/her digging and possibly making a den for the winter hibernation.
Sunday - We had set aside Sunday to visit the north loop of the park, there's not a much on the upper loop but near the north entrance is an area called Mammoth Hot Springs. This area is unique from the rest of the geyser/spring areas in Yellowstone in that the spring formations are atop a limestone formation and the springs produce a lot of calcium carbonate thus the white look. The springs in this area are not as active as they used to be, but it's still a very unique area. The image I provide earlier was from the lower terrace, there is also a driveable upper terrance with a few interesting formations.
The Mammoth Hotel lawn seems to be the elk breeding ground, as the cows (female elk) were just laying around and the bulls (male elk) were walking into town and waiting to make their move.
We then drove to the north exit to of course visit Montana, see the north entrance and also grab a bite to eat outside the park in the town of Gardiner just outside the entrance. Well, we made it to the north entrance, which by the way is just as awesome as the other entrances, but there was a line a mile long to get IN to the park. Rebecca and I didn't want to eat outside the park that bad, so we hightailed it back to Mammoth and ate at the Mammoth Hot Springs Dining Room.
From Mammoth we drove east to see Undine Falls and the Petrified Tree, which is an old sequoia tree which there used to be many of but are now only found in California. We also stopped in the Tower Fall area before heading back to the hotel.
Again in the evening we went back to Lamar Valley to see more animals including mountain goats, more antelope, sadly no bears this night and we just missed a wolf pack :(
Monday - The week had been pretty nice weather-wise until the weekend, they actually forecasted snow and when we left on Monday morning at 630am it was 25F outside and boy did it feel every bit of it. We left through the only exit we had not visited, the west entrance, and I would dare to say that it was nice but probably the least majestic of the entrances into Yellowstone. We made our way back to Salt Lake City for more beer at Porcupine Pub and Grill on the south side of SLC. Then it was back to Houston...
Thanks for reading if you made it this far :)
-Matthew and Rebecca
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