Grand Teton & Yellowstone National Parks

We left Jackson just before noon, and traveled up to Grand Teton National Park. Each National Park has a $25 entrance fee, so we were happy that we had purchased the annual pass back in March! The views of the Tetons from the overlooks were outstanding. Wildflowers are in full bloom and the foreground of each photograph was washed with sage, lemon & lavender hues. The snake river winds in the valley below the mountains, and Payton was excited to go swimming there.


After traveling through the Grand Teton NP, the next stop is the entrance to Yellowstone NP. Again another $25 fee covered by our annual pass! We got the map and plotted a course. It was early afternoon, around 3pm, and our first stop was Old Faithful. Andy had never seen it, so we parked at the visitor center (which was packed with tourists...Old Faithful being the park's most popular attraction). It was estimated that the geyser would erupt at approximately 4:01pm, so we took Payton for a stroll & booked a campsite for the night.


We have a short video of Old Faithful that I will attempt to upload to this site sometime this week. After enduring the mass of tourists, we headed around the western side of the main loop through the park stopping at fountain paint pot (a mud pot), sapphire pool (a deep blue hot spring) and hundreds of other thermal features. Along the way we ran into a number of the predicted "traffic jams". If it were not for two of them, we would have never seen a BEAR! The first large jam was for a Black Bear just about 40 yards off of the road eating - take a look at the slide show for photos. One of the last jams was for a Momma Grizzly & Cub. They were almost too far to distinguish with the naked eye, but we used the video & camera telephoto to get a better look. This was the first time either of us had ever seen a grizzly bear. Luckily they were very very far away.


Along with herds of buffalo and elk, we also witnessed a small coyote hunting for it's dinner off the side of the road in an open field. It was a long day and we were too exhausted to cook dinner, so after setting up camp at Bridge Bay, we ate some ham sandwiches, had a small campfire and called it a night...after we locked all scented items including food in the car.