Yellowstone and Glacier

Well, we’ve been rightfully accused of a ‘posting foul’ for falling off track in our postings. Unfortunately, we’ve not had internet access for 8 days now. We get a few sparse minutes of phone signal occasionally as we drive the parks but no hope of a good hotspot for the internet. We’ll do our best to catch up tomorrow when we are back on the road to Custer State Park in South Dakota.

So, no pictures today but a brief recap of our activities in Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons.

The End of our Drive to Yellowstone: We entered the park in the twilight hours and were treated to sights of Bison, a Black Bear, a Moose (head from a far distance), and Elk. Not bad for our first 30 miles in the park.

Yellowstone Day 1: After a long day in the car the previous day we’re ready to MOVE! We drove to the Old Faithful Geyser Basin, on the way there we saw our first bison of the day. He was leading a long line of cars over the bridge and right next to our car. It was a very interesting experience. At old Faithful we witnessed the geyser (right on time….of course) along with a thousand other people. After so many peaceful hikes with relatively few people this was a bit crowded for us. We then hiked the geyser basin a bit seeing beautiful hot springs and geysers. Then we unhitched the bikes and went on a trail to see other geothermal features. We happened upon a geyser called the Grand Geyser which isn’t nearly as predictable as Old Faithful. We sat behind a few people who are part of the ‘Geyser Gazer’ group. These people literally wait on geysers all over the park and give the Park service reports with radios.  We arrived right on time to see the grand geyser erupt, which was just absolutely spectacular. It spouted for over 9 minutes, after seeing the geyser erupt we biked back to our car, packed up and left.

Yellowstone Day 2:  We were ready to do some hiking when we woke up so we headed out to hike to Shoshone Lake along DeLacey creek. We walked through a lovely meadow with lots of flowers and some forest. The whole time we were battling the horrible beast of the Mosquito, our ally was Mosquito repellent. The Lake was the biggest back country Lake in the park, it was beautiful and amazing to look at. We also spotted an Osprey flying around, after resting for a while we headed back. After eating lunch we went on another hike to Fairy falls, which was a very uninteresting hike. It had its own perks like seeing a new forest growing up after the old one burnt down. The falls were slowly flowing and… there was one more perk, well actually 2 perks. One was that I found a pocket knife at the falls, I had been looking at one in Walmart but every store across the country was out. I was rewarded for my patience with an absolutely free knife. The second perk was that on the way back we climbed up a hill that over looked Prismatic Spring. That view was absolutely AMAZING, it was all different colors and shades of yellows, blues, greens, oranges and reds. We also saw mud pots that day which is amazing to watch, on one of them it said, “Caution: Flying hot mud”.

Yellowstone Day 3: Today we went to see Upper and Lower Yellowstone falls, we all agreed that we enjoyed the lower falls the best. It was huge and striking shades of color in the canyon along it. We hiked over to the Upper falls and went down to the bottom of it. The hike up was 328 stairs, Garrett and I sprinted up it in 3mins and 33 seconds, we dogged people all the way up. Instead of going back up the way we came through all the people we made a loop to see clear lake and Lilly Lake. I will tell you one thing they smell a lot, wherever there is anything coming out of the ground it stinks like really rotten eggs that have been sitting for years. Some smell worse than others the clear lake was one of them. We made it back to where we started and were way ready for lunch it was 2! I will saw this tough on the way back the canyon was…unbelievable there was no doubt that God had made it. There were unreal shades of yellow, red, and orange. We ate a famished lunch then went out again to hike Slough creek trial, we were all tired and ready to go home plus the Mosquitos were bad again, but we are all glad to do the hike at the end. We turned around at the meadow and on the way back dad spotted 2 things moving in the tree line…2 black bears (they were somewhat young).We watched them climbing till they went so far we couldn’t see them. We also saw a herd of prong horns on the way back. It was well worth a day of hiking.

Yellowstone Day 4: Our last day we hiked to the top of Mount. Washburn, 3.3 miles up, we didn’t stop once the whole way up, there was snow along the way that we played with. At the top I spotted a herd of Big horn sheep, all mama’s and babies. They were so cute to watch run around and eat. After eating lunch we turned around and headed back to our truck. The rest of the day we went to see the mud volcano, which used to shoot mud way in the air till its cone fell over, now it looks like a mud pot. After looking at all the stinky smelly interesting things there we drove back home; but stopped halfway to see sulfur caldron which had a pH of 1.

Yellowstone/Grand Tetons Day 5: We left Yellowstone today it was a sad day especially for me because I really liked the Bison, watching them cross the road and roll in dirt. Luckily the ride to Tetons was really short and quick. We arrived, set up, ate and left to hike. We hiked around Swan Lake and Heron pond, the scenery was also amazing. At Heron Pond we saw an immature bald eagle with some geese, and later on we saw a toad which Garrett caught. We packed dinner so we ate near a river then hiked a long Flagg Canyon, which we all agreed was really bad. We were right smack between the highway and a canyon with Mosquitos attacking us everywhere.

Grand Tetons Day 6: We woke up early and hiked along Jenny Lake to Hidden falls which is a big tourist place. (Why we went earlier.) Along the way I spotted a Osprey’s nest with one in it, we thought that was pretty cool but then we looked over and saw a Bird sweep down and take out another smaller bird. But we couldn’t tell what they were because of the sun; we assume that it was a Bald Eagle. The falls were amazing and we went to inspiration point then hiked down Cascade Canyon to Cascade Canyon Junction. It was a very long hike we didn’t have lunch till around 2-3:00. After relaxing for a while we headed back. A little bummed that we didn’t see a moose, when we ran in to a couple that said that there was a moose up the trail. We arrived just in time to see the moose before some people scared it away because they were to close. Then God blessed us again on the way back we saw Pika, which are little animals related to rabbits, but look like hamsters, a little one kept popping out and looking at us then darting away. As we were going down inspiration point a storm we steadily approaching so we picked up our pace and high jacked it out of there. Once we reached the bottom though it started raining, Garrett, Nathan, and I put on new rain ponchos that were bright yellow (our rain coats we had learned earlier were only wind coats.), we looked like little ducklings leading our parents. Once we got away from the boat dock and all the people it stopped raining and we walked to the truck in peace. Before we left though we soaked our feet in the cold mountain water river which felt absolutely amazing.

Tetons National Park Day 7: Today was an extremely fun day. We first got our junior ranger badges and then drove to Jackson Hole, Wyoming, along the way we spotted a Trumpeter swan with her babies. We were totally out of food so we had planned on eating out at this restaurant Mom had found, which we didn’t know had been closed earlier that year. So after driving around awhile to find it we ended stopping at Wendy’s. Then we drove again to get to the White water rafting place, we got completely lost and ended up arriving late. We all wore booties (except dad) and mom and Nathan got wet suites because we were rafting in river that had snow melt. At the beginning the first thing we saw was a bald eagle. We all loved the white water rafting, it was so fun and exciting we were going towards 5 foot waves in rapids and hitting them. Nathan was in the front of the boat and was supposed to be the wave spotter, but when we hit the first wave and he got soaked he just stood there for a while completely in shock. During times when we would hit really big waves Nathan would just disappear completely. Also Nathan got to help row for a while and steer the boat. We were all sad at the end of the rafting trip because we wanted to keep going, but we had a dinner to get to. We dressed and looked up the pictures they had taken of us going through the rapids. They were pretty funny. Then headed out to our chuck wagon dinner at Bar J Chuck wagon, if you are ever near this place you should totally go. The food is amazing but the best part is the show, I cannot even explain how good the show was, overall the best part was that they were amazing Christians and not afraid to proclaim their faith. They put on an intriguing show with comedy and singing mixed together. It was one of our most favorite places on the whole trip.