Saturday, July 18, 2015

Road Trip: Grand Teton & Yellowstone

July 7, 2015



After a good night's rest following the excitement of the flood, we headed on to our final destination: Grand Teton National Park.  We would camp there for four nights at Signal Campground.  My hope was to get pictures of a moose and a grizzly bear.  Nabbing both would make this road trip an undeniable success.

U.S. Route 89, WY
Pronghorn
Rock Springs is one hundred eighty miles South of Jackson Hole, which is minutes from Grand Teton.  We stopped a few times for pictures, so it took us longer than the three hours one might expect.  We saw a number of pronghorn on this drive.  Last time we were through we didn't stop for pictures and I regretted it because we this was the only place we saw them on that drive.  This time we stopped and got some nice pictures.

Pronghorn -- U.S. Route 89, WY
Pronghorn -- U.S. Route 89, WY
Pronghorn -- U.S. Route 89, WY
Lewis River
We blew right through Jackson Hole and headed up to Signal Mountain.  After finding a nice campsite and getting situated, we still had the entire afternoon ahead of us.  We decided to head up to Yellowstone and take in some of the sites.  Having this much time left in the day was an unexpected surprise.



Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park, WY
Black Sand Basin
Our first stop was Old Faithful.  Can't go to Yellowstone without seeing Old Faithful, right?  After seeing her spout, we headed to Black Sand Basin to to see some of the prettier thermal features in the park.  The banks of the Firehole River are particularly impressive in this spot.

Firehole River, Yellowstone National Park, WY
Sunset Lake, Yellowstone National Park, WY
Black Sand Basin, Yellowstone National Park, WY
We decided to head back to camp after touring the basin.  I think we planned on cooking but ended up having dinner at the lodge's bar.  On the way back we stopped to take pictures at a beaver dam I'd spotted from the road.  If you look closely at the picture below you'll see there's a beaver in the water to the left of the dam.

Beaver -- Yellowstone National Park, WY
Grand Teton National Park, WY
Soundtrack:

  • Cibo Matto -- Viva! la Woman
  • AC/DC -- Back in Black
  • Stevie Ray Vaughan -- Soul to Soul
  • Elliott Smith -- Either/Or




2 comments:

  1. Yellowstone is such a delight. Haven't been there in 35 years.

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    1. I've been there twice, the first time was three years ago on another road trip with Jim to Bruce's house in Colorado. There's still so much to see and do. I'm ready to go back.

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