Yesterday was a jam packed Independence Day and another late night. This morning I am sitting in the dining area of our motel waiting for my laundry to finish while the boys catch up on some sleep. Today we make the four hour trek to Glacier, but wait, I'm getting ahead of myself.
We woke up yesterday morning in our sweet little cottage at Grand Teton National Park surrounded by green trees, rugged mountains, and the gorgeous lake. Breakfast was Joe's treat at the Pioneer Grill. I had an omelet, David had cinnamon french toast and Joe had the special treat of Huckleberry pancakes.
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| String Lake, Grand Teton National Park |
We still had a few things to explore before leaving the park, so we packed up the car and headed to String Lake for a 3.3 mile hike. The lake had a lot of people on the water in inner tubes, kayaks, canoes and paddle boards. We originally thought the hike was a loop around the lake, but at the 1.5 mile marker and a ton of hiking up hill with no viewable path showing that we were going to actually get back to the other side, we started second guessng ourselves. What if the 3.3 hike was to an inlet and then we'd have to hike back out to our car? We were hot, sticky and swatting gigantic biting flies, so we decided to turn around and head back to the car. Once we got to the trail head and looked at the sign, we saw that it was a loop and that in the end we probably hiked more than we would have if we had kept going. Oh well.
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| Hiking around String Lake |
It was back in the car and another scenic drive up Signal Mountain for some amazing views before we finally began the journey toward the park exit and Yellowstone National Park, the granddaddy of all national parks. The park is huge with at least five main areas that seem big enough to be their own parks, but we were determined to do Yellowstone in a day (or half a day since we didn't get there until 3:30 or so). We drove through the southern entrance and headed toward Old Faithful, our first stop.
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| Old Faithful |
At the Old Faithful visitor center, we had an hour to kill before the famous geyser did its thing, so we walked through the exhibits reading about the three essentials of a geyser (heat, water, and fractures). Next was a quick visit to the gift shop, the 15 minute video about Yellowstone, and then it was time to walk outside with rest of the hoards to see Old Faithful spray it's steam and boiling water into the air. It was pretty impressive and lasted longer than I expected.
We drove for about an hour past many more geysers to our next stop, the Canyon, known as the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We also saw why the park is named Yellowstone. The Yellowstone river cuts through the canyon revealing many shades of yellow and gold rock.
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Yellowstone's
Grand Canyon |
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| Mammoth Hot Springs |
We were starting to drag, but it was back to the car and on to the next area, Tower Falls. It was pretty, but not as impressive as what you see in Yosemite. Our final destination in the park was Mammoth Hot Springs where we saw streams of steaming water coming out of terraces of rock. Yellowstone is full of places to visit and explore and we obviously did not give it the attention it deserved. The greatest difficulty we found was the distance between areas. It was easily 30-60 minutes of driving each time we visited a new section with changing elevations from 6,000 to 8,000 feet depending on where you were. You could spend a month in this park and not see everything. Along the drives though, we got to see wildlife on the side of the road, and I mean literally on the side of the road. There were two instances when a bison was just grazing near the water maybe 50 feet from the roadside. And then there was an elk (or a really large deer) that just decided to meander across the road stopping traffic. It was amazing.
We left the park at 9:00 p.m. and still had about an hour of daylight left, so we hit the road for our resting place of the night, Bozeman, Montana. As we arrived in town, the sky was lit up with fireworks as the community celebrated the Fourth of July. It was a nice welcome and our beds were even more welcoming.
Now it's time to fold and pack the laundry and head out for our next adventure!
For another perspective:
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