After a violent thunderstorm the previous evening, after which we finally ate a delicious dinner in the Mural Room with a table by the large picture windows looking out onto the mountains, we headed north again. By driving back through part of Yellowstone, we were able to save substantial mileage.That turned out to be fortuitous, because the drive out the East Entrance of Yellowstone was one of the more beautiful drives we took. After passing Mary Bay, underneath which lie the hottest parts of the park, you climb out through a high pass with new snow patches and waterfalls around every bend. Eventually, on the other side of the pass, you enter an area of fantastically carved hoodoos in soft welded ash and rhyolite rock. Streams and lakes abut the highway. Eventually you come out onto ... read more

Rising up almost directly from the plains, the Tetons present some of the most picturesque mountain views in the world. There is no crawl upward through ever higher foothills - it is just a straight shot up to the summit of Grand Teton at 13,775', rising 7000' above Jackson Hole. However, this is partly illusory, since Jackson Hole is depressed below the surrounding plains. Although containing some of the oldest rocks in North America ) 2.5 billion years old), the Tetons are one of the youngest mountain ranges on earth, their formation having started some 6-9 million years ago. The were created by a graben fault that resulted in the mountains being pushed up while Jackson Hole fell. The parks was created in 1929, and expanded with the addition of the previous Jackson Hole National Monument ... read more

A current video about Yellowstone calls the park "a symphony of fire and water" and I can't come up with a better description. Water is everywhere - flowing, spouting, steaming and gurgling. Water has shaped the landscape and provided much of the explosive energy that has created such features as the West Thumb limb of Yellowstone Lake. It constantly percolates down from the surface into the porous and cracked rock underneath, reaching great depths where pressure can result in water remaining in the liquid form at temperatures higher than 400 degrees. Water in the form of glaciers formed many of the valleys and left behind rock piles known as moraines, as well as large boulders strewn about haphazardly. But one of the most visible activities of water is to emerge from underground as one of the ... read more

A short drive from Bozeman brought us to the Gardiner entrance to Yellowstone National Park. This is the big one- the oldest national park in the world, about 2 million acres of mountains, plains, rivers, and geothermal features. Instead of sticking to a daily journal, it is a lot more useful to divide this into the two main categories of things to be seen: animals and geographic/geologic features. Yellowstone has been called the "American Serengeti". Having seen both, I would agree. Yellowstone comprises a large ecosystem with relatively balanced predator/prey populations, particularly since the reintroduction of wolves in 1995. There are about 30-40,000 elk, 2500-4500 bison, about 600 grizzly bears, an approximately equal number of black bears, and about 200 wolves. Elk and bison are essentially omnipresent throughout the park, while bears are much less commonly ... read more

At the end of our Crypt Lake hike, a fellow hiker came down with his hiking poles and after talking with him we realized that they could be quite helpful. As we discovered, they allow you to use your arms to take some of the strain off your legs. This is useful both in ascent and in descent, sparing muscles going up and knees coming down. So we bought collapsible hiking poles before attempting our next hike. Today's goal: Grinnell Glacier. We had done this hike many years ago with the kids, and it was one of the most beautiful things I had seen, so we wanted to repeat the experience. On our previous experience, Clint was ten and Ashley eleven. When we finished the hike, a woman was sitting alone in the boat back to ... read more