Today was another awesome day in Yellowstone.
After the late dinner in Hayden Valley last night we got back to our camp site pretty late. But the girls were already tucked in and asleep for about the last 90 minutes of the drive back, so not too bad for them.
It got pretty funny early this morning. We set our alarm to get an early start over to Old Faithful. Alarm went off around 6:45, we got up, threw on some clothes and were on the road about 7:00. The girls kept sleeping the entire drive over to
Old Faithful , a little more than an hour . Maybe you had to be there, but I was cracking up when they woke up with no clue where they were or even what day it was. Did you know that Yellowstone contains 60% of all of the planet's geysers?
We saw Old Faithful erupt around 9 AM, then found Jill and Andrew White and their two children Madeline and George over at the
Old Faithful Inn (click for more on the 100+ year old iconic national park lodge). We'd been planning to meet them, but with no cell phone service we were happy to finally meet up. After a nice, but slow, breakfast at the hotel we went back out for round two with Old faithful then hit the road on the way to a gentle hike for the whole gang.
We stopped for lunch at a non-descript picnic site along the way and as we were about to pack up to go Andrews sister-in-law came running over. They had been picnicing about 50 feet away. Neither Andrew or his brother knew the other was going to be in Yellowstone, so this was a pretty amazing event (they both live in Virginia, Yellowstone is a 2.2 million acre national park well over a thousand miles from their home, and we stopped at some random picnic area with no particular attraction to it, so almost spooky).
We had a fair amount of rain so did a lot of driving, saw another beautiful hotel (the Lake Yellowstone Lodge) and stopped there for some coffee. We saw a moose on the way and that was pretty cool.
From there we took the kids to a ranger talk about the bald eagle at Fishing Bridge and that was very interesting (I was proud of Kirsten's knowledge of the selection of the Bald Eagle as the national symbol. Kirsten informed the group that Ben Franklin was against it, since it's primarily a scavenger, and instead favored the wild turkey. Now you know, too.)
Hot dogs on the drive back tonight, the kids are tucked in, I'm picking up the laundry at the launderette here at the campground (julie did it all, I'm just picking it up so I could get on the Internet.)
Off to Grand Teton tomorrow and hopefully I'll have some time to write some more and get more pictures up. These first posts were all rushed and I'm trying to get back to home, tin home for some shut eye.
I think you can post comments, so feel free.
The Jackson Hole KOA actually looked a little better by day, but a KOA RV park just the same. We got ourselves cleaned up and drove the few miles up to Teton Village (Jackson Hole ski resort) to meet Jill, Andrew, Madeline and George White. We took a nice hike up one of the main ski runs which gave us a beautiful view of the mountains, village and surrounding valley. It's been pretty hard to find a bad place to hike or just look around on this trip. 
After an hour or so hiking we drove down into Jackson to visit the National Museum of Wildlife Art which was amazing. Take a look at that link to get an idea, but even the building itself was a work of art. The kids had a blast in the museum's Children's Discovery center which made the outing very enjoyable for the whole crew while one adult stood watch with the kids while the rest toured the galleries.
the lily pads munching away. They were about 100 yards away or less, I think, so we got a great long look at them. As we were watching, an osprey (large eagle-like bird) came swooping by and landed in a tree across the lake (narrow lake, so pretty visible). It then came swooping down not far from the moose, grabbed a fish out of the lake and then circled around two or three times as if to show off. It's wing span looked to be six feet or more as it rose up over the trees and went out over the bay.
was a ranger on board who gave a "fire and ice" talk explaining about the fires in the area that have helped to shape the scenery, as well as the geological and glacial activity that have created such a dramatic mountain range rising almost straight up from the valley floor. This picture is of Mt. Moran with a view of the "Skillet Glacier" in the center of the photo.
We missed our alarm and had a rushed exit from the "RV Resort." (they may have been taking liberties in their title, I'd have to rank it a full star below the four seasons. We were only there about 9 hours, though, and their electricity and sewer holes seemed about the same as the rest of them).
While we were doing that, Julie and the older girls took a float trip down the Snake River. I'll let julie fill in some of the details later, but it was an incredibly memorable trip for them. The pictures help paint the picture, but the bufallo picuture was not taken with a long lens, just our little pocket digital. They could hear them snorting.
We had a nice 2 mile hike around Colter Bay in the afternoon and then hosted Jill, Andrew, Madeline and George at the Colter Bay RV park(ing lot with trees). Actually this site was the best so far, actually in the woods and very short walk to the Colter Bay attractions. Julie made some great carne asada with fixings.
After dinner we walked over to the amphitheater at the visitor center on the bay and listened to Ranger Jodi tell us about Coyotes and a little about wolves by comparison. The coyotes up here are quite a bit larger, fluffier and darker then the ones we have in LA, so they're often mistaken for wolves up here, even by the experts.
We had a wonderful day in the town of West Yellowstone Montana where we took it easy before our drive down to Grand Teton national park. We started with a stop at the West Yellowstone Ranger Station where the girls were awared their Junior Ranger Patches in recognition of their completion of Yellowstone's Junior Ranger program.
Then we visited the Grizzly Discovery Center. It's a museum and rescue facility where they had some great exhibits on grizzlies and black bears and had a few live grizzlies that had been rescued from zoos or the wild. We got to seem them have their feeding and a good romp around in their big pen area. Very impressive animals. Unfortunately we didn't see any bears in the wild.
The drive down to Grand Teton was beautiful. Most of it through Yellowstone and then out the south entrance into Grand Teton. The first view of the mountain range across Jackson Lake on the drive down was breathtaking.
We had an amazing dinner with the Whites at Jackson Lake lodge with a view out over the lake across to the mountains.
We saw Old Faithful erupt around 9 AM, then found Jill and Andrew White and their two children Madeline and George over at the Old Faithful Inn (click for more on the 100+ year old iconic national park lodge). We'd been planning to meet them, but with no cell phone service we were happy to finally meet up. After a nice, but slow, breakfast at the hotel we went back out for round two with Old faithful then hit the road on the way to a gentle hike for the whole gang.
We had a fair amount of rain so did a lot of driving, saw another beautiful hotel (the Lake Yellowstone Lodge) and stopped there for some coffee. We saw a moose on the way and that was pretty cool.
