We woke up after a cold night on lumpy ground to air filled with mosquitoes. While trying to warm up the car and simultaneously get it loaded, each of the kids suffered several bug bites. Camp was quickly struck, and we headed into West Yellowstone for breakfast, with everyone still in PJs.
We had breakfast in a covered wagon-themed table; I get the idea that West Yellowstone is a tourist town, with lots of folks coming in to pretend that the American West is all about cowboy hats and saying “pardner”. It’s charming, in a Disney sort of way.
Back into the park, and on the way to the loop road, we found a herd of bison hanging around. One family in particular was really close to the road, so we got some nice photo ops, and got to watch a bison calf ford a shallow stream. Cute!
Two families
Last year’s calf had a serious case of bed-head
The baby was real cute.
Mom and calf fording the stream
Calf skipping around
Wobble came in very handy as a spotting scope.
We’d skipped the Artist’s Paint Pots the day before, so we headed back towards Norris
Playing around with shutter speeds to freeze the water
…or blur it
to see them. Totally worth it.
There’s a mud pot up at the top of the trail that looks like something Spielberg would have come up with.
This bubbling mud pot was about as big as a small car
It was in almost constant motion
Throwing up globs of mud the consistency of yesterday’s gravy (note the individual droplets)
That just formed these crazy features for a moment
and then disappeared.
We also saw a bee making the rounds through the clover.
Buzzing through the clover
Much smaller than our honeybees, and nearly black. Too big for a mason bee, though. Hmm.
I also photographed some flowers throughout the day.
This one was only in Grand Teton National Park
Also, Brett found a tree that was just his size.
Figure both of these guys are about 6 years old.
We then started off in the direction of Old Faithful. The lower loop road in Yellowstone is longer than the upper, so there was a lot more driving in between stops. The stops today were also a lot longer, because we ended up hiking up the trails more.
By day two, you’re not stopping for “just another geyser”, even one shooting steam 50′ high
We stopped at the Middle Norris Geyser field,
Excelsior Geyser, that blue is stunning
and ended up finding a beauty — the Grand Prismatic Pool, which has just a rainbow set of colors from deep blue to orange-red.
The multicolor fog was eye-popping
The photos of this always show the entire pool, but there’s nowhere from the main walking path to get this perspective — I later checked out the postcards of the place, and realized that the photographer was on the hill above the pool. Cheaters. 🙂
Old Faithful was the next stop. The area surrounding it is a bit of a zoo; huge parking lots, gas station, general store, and seating all the way around the geyser. With the thing going off at regular intervals, we decided to grab some lunch and a little downtime while waiting for the show.
Alone with Old Faithful
With Old Faithful experienced, we were headed for the south exit. We were running low on fuel, so we stopped for gas inside the park. They did their best to have insanely overpriced fuel, but it was $3.99, which is essentially what we pay in Seattle, so “ho hum”. The trip out the south gate was pretty straightforward — a couple of nice campsites down there that had vacancies midafternoon.
I was photographed in front of this sign in 1998. I had the same pullover with me.
The south entrance to Yellowstone opens right into Grand Teton National Park. It’s 60mi to Jackson from the Yellowstone gate. The Grand Teton mountains are really impressive.
mountains rising right out of a lake.
It’s hard to get a wide enough photo to show how gorgeous these mountains are.
Hey, look! A glacier!
This style of fence is very popular in Montana and Wyoming. Maybe it’s to handle snow load? Oh, and there’s some mountains or something.
They seem to rise up right out of a lake, and they sit there looking all gorgeous, right down to the base. We didn’t stop, because Kristi was about fried with long driving days and we wanted to get to Jackson to bed down.
Wyoming traffic jam
We got to Jackson around 6pm, and it was a zoo. Tourist trap written all over it, with lots of bad driving and way too many people. We checked Google maps, and decided to press on to Pocatello, ID for the night (the closest town with a Marriott). Google claimed it was about a 2 hour drive, so we booked online (straight through the Marriott site, sorry Expedia), and had dinner in Jackson Hole. We started off around 7pm, fully expecting to be in Pocatello by 9; Marjorie put us on a very windy mountain road and estimated 3.5 hours. Ouch. Other than the late hour, the hell ride into Pocatello would have been very pretty, and I’m a bit peeved at Marjorie at the moment, as there were several points along the way where she took us in directions that were less than optimal.
We got into Pocatello around 10:30, and everyone bedded down right away. We’re bound for Craters of the Moon tomorrow, probably bedding down in Boise, and from there a lazy two-day drive home.
This road trip has definitely taken a turn back towards hearth and home, but we have a few more days of road trip fun to go.