Thermapolis Day 1

Monday, Sept. 20 - This morning we pulled out of the beautiful Grand Tetons National Park, after a quick stop at the General Store for donuts (not as good as Tim Horton's, though).  We decided to head east to the town of Thermapolis, home of the world's largest mineral hot springs.  We seem to be closing these national parks as we leave -- end of September they start shutting down most of the campgrounds.  We saw one deer this morning, just as we pulled out of the campground.  The fall colors are something to see, though, with the mixture of reds, oranges and yellows amongst the green pine trees.

Unfortunately, these pictures really do not show the richness of the mountainsides. We went over Togwotee Pass, elev. 9658, seemed like we climbed for the first 30 miles after leaving the park (Hwy 26).  This highway has open range and we came upon some cattle grazing right beside the road.  Luckily, none decided to head across as we passed.

The scenery along this highway was beautiful.  This is the Teton National Forest.  We spotted a wolf crossing an open field.  We headed into Riverton, then turned north through Shoshoni to Thermapolis.  This drive took us past Boysen State Park and Boysen Lake, which was pretty good-sized.  This highway follows the Wind River for miles and miles, and I think we crossed it about 10 times.  It eventually changes names to the Big Horn River.  The Big Horn River is one of the few North-flowing rivers in the U.S.  It joins the Yellowstone River in Montana, which joins the Missouri River near North Dakota, which eventually joins the Mississippi River.  What a roundabout course it takes!

This scenic byway took us through tunnels, one right after the other, in Wind River Canyon.  We had had the 3-tunnel thing once before, on the way to Cody just after the Buffalo Bill Dam and Reservoir.

The wind really blew through this canyon, and it was all Joe could do to keep us on the road.  The scenery was beautiful, and there were some campgrounds along the river, but we knew it would be too windy for us there, so we drove on into Thermapolis. 

The printing on the big rock says "World's Largest Thermal Hot Springs." 

We decided to stay at the Fountain of Youth RV park because it has a hot pools right in the campground.  It was 85 degrees today, so we were not too sure about getting into the water, but we finally braved the elements and got in, about 5:00 p.m.

We missed Mazie here because she had been going with us to the hot springs most of the trip.  Marilyn joined us on the last one, so we missed here too, but we were on our own here.  This one has a fountain with water flowing up into it, too.

At night they light it up with red lights and it looks like hot coals at the bottom.  Very pretty.  We went back into the water a second time about 7:30 p.m., but my swimsuit wasn't quite dry so I was a little reluctant.  And we knew it was going to be a cold walk back to the camper.  But it was fun.  Of course, these mineral hot springs always smell like rotten eggs, so we took showers after both dips.

Joe picked up a paper this morning and saw that the "managed fire" in Yellowstone that we had seen on Wed. had pushed beyond the "contained" line and was not an uncontained fire, due to the high winds and dry weather that we had experienced there all week.  Lightning had started the fire last Tuesday, the day before we saw it, and we assumed it had been started on purpose, but now we know that just because it is a "managed" fire does not mean that.  I don't know if "controlled burn," like we see in Arizona has the same meaning or not.  Hopefully, they will get it under control quickly.

Tetons - Driggs

Sunday, Sept. 19 - Today we decided to take the Jenny Lake road and drive over to Driggs, Idaho.  Someone in the park told us that was a beautiful drive, and it takes us over the summit of Teton Pass.  We were on the road by 9:00 a.m.  It was a chilly morning, 37 degrees, but it warmed up to the 80s.  And 80 seemed hot, hot, hot!  We have to rethink our route home because we don't want to get home before the Arizona temps drop below 100.  We are thinking we are going through Moab, Utah, but that is a pretty hot area too.  We'll see.  That's one of the wonders of retirement - we can make our own agenda and take our time.

We saw 4 deer beside the road just after leaving the campground.  The Tetons are pretty spectacular.  There are lots of viewing points along all the roads in the park.

We stopped and checked out Jenny Lake.  The water in the lakes and rivers here is so clear it is unbelievable.

There are some glaciers in the Tetons, although they are all receding.  This mountain contains the Teton Glacier.

We took a little road off the Jenny Lake Road that took us to Teton Village, a ski area.  But on this road, we finally, finally (!) saw a bear!  We came upon our first "bear jam."

We aren't the only ones who get excited about bears!  This one was a brown black bear, we think.  We never got a good look, or a good picture, but the bear is on the left side of the next picture.

It was munching on Saskatoon berries, and you could see the trees and bushes shaking when he ripped off a limb.  The bear finally wandered off out of sight, so everyone moved on.

Teton Village is pretty spread out, and there was an aerial tram ride going up the mountain, but we didn't take that.

We drove on up over the pass.  The fall colors of the trees (Aspens, we think) and grasses or weeds are really beautiful.  That's one thing I've always missed since moving away from Indiana -- fall, with its colors and smells.

We had lunch in Driggs at a little motel/restaurant that specialized in "cowboy cuisine."  There was a chicken outside that I think Brenda probably needs, to go with the one she has.

We drove back and took the Jackson Hole intersection.  Joe remembers that his brother Tom fell in love with Jackson Hole, so we checked it out.  It has antler arches in town by a park, and we saw another one as we left.

Just after leaving town, we drove beside a National Elk Refuge.  The elk haven't migrated down from the mountains yet, apparently, because we did not see any right here.  We read that the Boy Scouts gather the antlers in the spring as a fundraiser and sell them.  The Japanese are the biggest purchasers, supposedly for medicinal purposes.  The Boy Scouts get to keep 80% of the proceeds, so it sounds like a great idea.

We drove down an access road to get to the Snake River.  I wasn't too sure about this road, it had a 19% grade, but Joe just moseyed right on down it.  There was a guy fishing, and a few people just enjoying the river.

Back on the main road, we came upon another big meadow and I spotted a herd of bison -- the first we had seen since leaving Yellowstone.  Then I saw some antelope in front of them, and an elk ran across in front of the antelope.  There were probably 40 or more antelope scattered over this meadow.  The elk headed on up into the mountain, running almost all the way.  And the bison just grazed.  But it was great to get to see these animals.

We think we are leaving here tomorrow, not sure which way we are heading.  The National Parks are really wonderful places, and I am in awe of our forefathers who had the vision to set aside these areas so many years ago.  And I'm really happy that we are getting to enjoy them now.

Yellowstone Day 5 and enroute to Grand Tetons

Friday-Saturday, Sept. 17-18 - Today we scheduled ourselves for a day of rest.  We have driven all the roads in the park except the 14 miles going out the West entrance, and the 22 miles going out the South entrance, which we will pick up as we leave.  So we did laundry this morning, then Joe greased the RV, we had lunch at the General Store and shopped a little.  We have new Yellowstone baseball caps - buy one, get second one free!  Then we went to the Visitor Center at Fishing Bridge and took in a ranger talk on moose and elk.  We actually learned a few things from his talk.  We went back to camp and rested (I took a nap, Joe read).  We have been so lucky here with the weather.  After having so much rain all summer, we were blessed with sunshine every day here, temperatures in the 60s/70s.  We took no pictures today, saw no animals, and just rested up.

Saturday, we were on the road by 9:00 a.m, and drove out of Yellowstone through the South Entrance.  We passed Heart Lake, saw a deer on the bank of Yellowstone Lake right beside the steaming hotspots.  We didn't get a picture, which I really regretted because that would have been an awesome picture.  I could probably have submitted it to some kind of contest.  Oh well.

Then we crossed the Snake River, which comes out of the Tetons.

As we exited Yellowstone, we drove the 8 miles on the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Highway into Grand Teton National Park, and got our first glimpse of these magnificent mountains.

We got into our campground around 11:00, then drove over to the Colter Bay Lodge to look around.  They have huge windows overlooking a grassy/shrub meadow and then Jackson Lake.  Someone had spotted a moose in the meadow, so we scoped that out.  All we could see of him was his massive antlers, the scrub brush was that tall.  Then we saw one lone elk, and shortly after that we spotted a small herd of elk, maybe 6-8.  We had lunch at the lodge and just enjoyed the scenery and sunshine for a couple hours, then we headed out for a drive.

We drove back a couple side roads, then headed up to the summit of Signal Mountain.  The campground host had told us there had been black bear activity on Signal Mountain, but they must have all been napping when we were there.  But the views were awesome.

We stopped at Jackson Lake Dam, on the Snake River, and got a great picture of a raven sitting on the fence.

There were people fishing this river, and I decided to put my foot in it.  I missed Mazie, she is now 2 sights behind on the "toes in the water."

We took another side road, a 2-mile dirt road that actually took us out of the park and into the Bridger-Teton National Forest, but then the road dead-ended.  As we drove back to camp, we circled in and out of a couple other campgrounds.  We saw 2 deer, one that posed nicely for a picture.

We have a great campsite here, with the woods beside us.  It was finally warm enough to eat outside, so I fixed us some soup and we ate outside, watching other campers trying to park their rigs.

Yellowstone Day 4

Thursday, Sept. 16 - Today we finished the Grand Loop, driving back around to pick up the road we came in on in the RV, since we didn't stop at the lookouts then.  After our two 12-hour marathon days, we were both a little tired today, so we didn't get started until 10:00.  But we ended our day about 6:30, and tomorrow is going to be a day of rest and getting ready to leave on Saturday, so we are looking forward to that.

Our first stops were at the Brink of the Upper Falls of Yellowstone River.  We had seen it from the other side, but we had not driven back to this lookout.

Then we stopped at the Brink of the Lower Falls, which we had not seen before.  I think this road had been closed when we passed it the other times.

This area is called the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and it is pretty magnificent. There were several lookouts along here, and we stopped at them all.

As we continued our on loop, we saw the smoke again from the "managed fire" they started yesterday here.  It is really windy today, and this does not seem like a good idea.  There is a lot of burnout in the park, from a 1988 massive forest fire.  That was the dryest year on record here and there were 50 fires that year.  But now the trees are growing back, and the fall colors of the trees and flowers in the burnout areas is really beautiful.  Banks are just covered in colors.

These hexagonal columns were caused by volcanic flow.  We see several shelfs like this in this part of the park.
 
And there is a petrified redwood tree here, caused by volcanos millions of years ago.

This park has many faces, from forests to steaming hot spots, to meadows, rivers, creeks and waterfalls.  The park encompasses 2.2 million acres and there are roads that let you see a lot of it.  A lot of people fly-fish in the river here (walking out through the bison sometimes).  The ever-changing landscape is very interesting.

Mammoth Springs, the entrance we came through initially, has lots of geysers and travertine terraces.  Steam vents, called fumaroles, are also abundant -- hissing steam and gases stream from many spots throughout the park.  This one is called Orange Spray Mound.

We came upon another pretty waterfall, Unidine Falls.  We just keep taking pictures.

We drove by this mossy creek area on the way in, and thought Bridgette would be interested in it.  We couldn't figure out what kind of grass is the stream, but Joe stuck his hand in the water and it was warm.  Just a little further downstream, we saw the steaming hotspots that warm up this creek.

The bison roam freely here, and there are thousands in the park.  We usually encounter at least one buffalo jam every day.  They are very funny to watch, they just saunter along, and could care less if cars are right in front of them.  They seem to know they have the right-of-way.  We still haven't seen any bears.  There was a black bear sighting today on our route, down in a valley a little ways from the road, but there were so many cars pulled off that we couldn't find a place to park.  A park ranger was hustling up there, trying to get the traffic under control.  We went on past, but there was a six-mile loop road that we took, and we ended up back by the bear sighting, but it had just gone into the bushes or trees and could no longer be seen.  And we still didn't have room to park!

We saw 2 deer today, and 5 elk on our way back.  It was getting evening then, so the animals (at least the elk) were starting to move around.  And, of course, we saw hundreds of bison.  Another great day in Yellowstone!