summer 2009 - Day 4

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Grand Teton National Park / Yellowstone National Park

We woke up, and broke down the campsite, as we were taking things out of the tent a deer ran by, about 10 yards from us, Ethan thought it was really “cool”.
After we packed up the car, we made our way over to Colter Bay village, where I stopped in the store and bought some bagels and cream cheese for breakfast. We then went on a hike, Ethan was all excited for hiking. So, away we go, the hike started out at Jackson Lake, which was a nice view of the Tetons in the background with the lake and boats in the foreground. Well, all Noah wanted to do was watch the boats. But in due time we continued along a wide fairly flat trail. The further we went the worse the mosquitos got. Noah was making this a very difficult hike, anyway, we pushed on. The hike was only about .8 miles each way. After about .6 miles, the mosquitos were to bad to continue, so we turned around and headed back. Once back we packed into the car, and again stopped at the grocery store. I bought stuff for lunch, packed it in the cooler and we started our journey to Yellowstone. We drove north through the northern part of the Tetons and into Yellowstone National Park (YNP). We drove through the very southern section of the park and noticed how different the terrain was compared to the Tetons. Many more trees and the mountains are different. As we made our way to a picnic area on lake yellowstone, north of West thumb we took in all of the great scenery. We stopped for lunch on the lake and had our picnic. Ethan and Noah enjoyed “playing” with a chipmunk as we ate. Took some pictures and continued. Not to far down the road I spotted a 3 bison on the side of the road. I stopped at the turnout so we could take some pictures. They were very close to us! We continued are drive and there were bison everywhere, sometimes 1 or 2 hanging out and sometimes a whole herd. As we drove, we passed some thermal features, but didn’t stop, we are going to visit them later in the week. We turned off and made a stop at the Brink of Upper Falls in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We got out of the car and made the short 1/8 of a mile hike to the falls overlook. What a spectacular site! We got back in the car and drove to Canyon Lodge & Cabins, which is where we are staying for tonight and tomorrow night. We checked in but found out that our room wouldn’t be ready for about an hour or so. We visited the range station and got the papers for the kids to become Junior Rangers, visited the volcanic exhibit in the ranger station, and listened to the Ranger talk about the different animal tracks. Then, we got the keys to the room, unpacked the car and we all showered and got ready for dinner. We had dinner in the restaurant at the hotel, it was OK but nothing to right home about, Then, a typical night, walked around, got ice cream and called the Gerbers and Kambers from a pay phone since our mobile phones have no service up here....Thanks AT&T! Went to the room and called it a night.

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Photos

What a View.....
The view from our morning hike in the Grand Tetons.