Yellowstone and Grand Teton

Sorry I haven't updated in a while.  I didn't get decent wifi in between the last few parks, so this one will be a double header.  I spent the last week and a half in two of the nations most well known parks, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton.  Both offered an amazing wildlife viewing, and the geysers and hot springs in Yellowstone are some of the best in the world.  Not to mention the views of the Teton Mountain Range are spectacular.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and Lower Falls

Old Faithful being faithful

Bison playing in the mud

I started my time in Yellowstone up near the Mammoth Basin before moving farther south, closer to the main attractions of the park.  My days were spent mostly exploring the hot spring Basins and looking for wildlife.  By the afternoons, the park was hot and crowded, so most of my activities were done in the morning.  Everyone knows about Old Faithful, but I didn't realize that the Hot Springs and geysers were spread out nearly all over the park.  There are over 10,000 geothermal sites!  Between a whole day exploring the Old Faithful area and another in some of the small geyser basins, I got to see my fair share of hot water.  In addition, a few mornings I went out in search of wildlife, and was very successful.  There are more big animals in Yellowstone then you can imagine, and they are so used to people they often are right along the road.  I got to see Moose, Deer, Elk, Pronghorn and Bison all over the place.  The Bison especially, as in the plains they would cause mile long traffic jams when they decided to hang out in the road.  A couple of coyotes, hawks, and marmots made for a wide variety to.  No luck on finding bears or wolves, which would have been really cool, but that just means I have to come back someday.

Rainbow Hotspring

Cathedral Group of the Teton Range

In Grand Teton, which was a bit cooler and a lot less crowded, I was able to get out and do more exploring, both hiking and driving.  I spent one day doing a long hike along the shores of Jackson Lake with the Teton's towering in the back, and another driving along the Snake River on a tiny one lane dirt road.  I got to see a lot of the same wildlife here as in Yellowstone: moose, elk, deer, pronghorn.  However, here they were much less used to people and were always weary of my presence.  It was nice to see them in a more "natural" state, not so used to human traffic.

Huron Lake

I am now on my way to two parks right near each other in South Dakota: Wind Cave and Badlands.  Wind Cave, as you can imagine, has a large network of caverns, while Badlands highlights some of the most interesting landscape in the country.  After that Derek joins me and we head along the northern border of the US heading east.  But I can tell you more about that in my next update.  Until then!

Jackson Lake and The Grand Tetons