Goodbye Yellowstone…Hello Grand Tetons!

I love how the mountains appear to just sit on the water.

We saw this book in all of the visitor centers, and the kids laughed every time!

Our first stop in Grand Tetons was Colter Bay Village.  We walked part of the Lakeshore Trail.

Rock-throwing ensued.

I really wish we had stopped the car to get a better shot from this vantage point!

Next, we took a boat shuttle from the Jenny Lake Visitor Center.  It only took about ten minutes.

After we disembarked from the boat, we hiked to Inspiration Point.  This was a real hike, as opposed to the strolls along the boardwalks of Yellowstone.  The incline up the mountain was pretty constant, and quite challenging!

We made it!!

Amazingly, n did not complain and claimed that he was not tired.  k claimed she had about “10% battery life left”, but she did well overall too.  I probably complained the most!

We bought a round trip boat ticket.  It was refreshing when the driver maneuvered the boat so that we were sprayed with water from the lake after our hot hike.

For our last night in Yellowstone, we stayed at the Grant Village campground.  When we checked in, the ranger told us there was a bear in the campground, but thankfully, we never encountered it.

After setting up camp, we went to the Visitors Center.  We listened to talk about bear safety.

There was a small audience, so D ended up having to volunteer to play the bear.

For dinner, we ate at the Lakehouse restaurant.  Let’s just say that the food here is a travesty.

The view was nice, though.

We tried the grill, and ended up with these pale, undercooked fries.  Xanterra, you need to step up your game!

Still unsatisfied, we ended up buying huckleberry yogurt and apple slices at the general store and eating some more of our stash of cup o’noodles.  I was excited to see that there were actual huckleberries listed as one of the ingredients this time!

West Thumb is known as moose territory, so we were keeping our fingers crossed for a sighting.  We didn’t come across any, but we did see numerous elk.

Again, such gorgeous scenery!

Yay—a picture with all four of us!  We saw tons of people with selfie sticks.  D received one at work just a week after we returned from our vacation.  It would have come in handy, although I would have felt really silly.

The guidebooks I read did not really seem to hype up the West Thumb area, so my expectations were not too high.  However, it definitely ended up being one of the highlights!

The parking lot for Old Faithful is massive.  We were not sure where we should go, but then we saw a large crowd, and Old Faithful was erupting right as we arrived!

Afterward we went to the Visitor Center.

The kids earned their Junior Ranger Badges.  There is a different badge for each age category.

The next eruption was due at 12:02 so we had a little time to kill.  (We wanted to see it again, from the beginning.)  We watched the movie in the visitor center theater.

D graciously offered to buy us sandwiches at the General Store while the kids and I saved our viewing spot.  There are benches all around Old Faithful, and there are no bad seats!

The eruption starts off slow…It really is amazing how accurate its timing is.

Massage time.

D offered some comedic relief to everyone around us by counting down from ten seconds at the predicted time, and adding, “3 and a half…3…2 and a half…” etc. when there was still no eruption.

But, about five minutes after the predicted time, Old Faithful did her thing.

Won’t that be a sad day if/when Old Faithful stops being so faithful?

Afterward, we walked along the boardwalk to see the neighboring sights.

Our next stop was the Old Faithful Lodge, where we sampled Huckleberry and Mango ice cream.

The double scoop was quite large, more like four scoops, which all four of us shared.  The family in front of me ordered six double scoops, one for each member in their family, which included small children.  Is that normal, or are we the weird ones?

The second story of the lodge had a nice seating area, and provided us with some much-needed shady respite.

The overnight low was in the high 30’s, but we had enough blankets, sleeping bags and clothing to keep warm.  We packed up our campsite since we had another reservation in a different part of the park the next day.  After eating our oatmeal, fruit and granola bars, we drove to Gibbon Falls.  It was nice to be pretty close to the waterfall without hiking!

Our next stop was Lower Geyser Basin, along Firehole Lake Drive, which we could see off to the distance during our drive.

Next on the itinerary was Midway Geyser Basin.  Before the trip, I downloaded a Yellowstone app on my phone.  We listened to a brief overview of the sights we were going to see along the way.  I thought it was well worth $3.  (There are much more extensive and expensive audio tours available for rent, but given our kids’ short attention span, the app was the way to go for us).

I was really excited to see the Grand Prismatic Spring.

The light blue steam was so cool, especially in contrast to the orange basin.

Up next: Old Faithful!

Did you know that Yellowstone has their own Grand Canyon?

There’s even a waterfall at one end!

n needed a lot of breaks during this stop because he claimed he was “stiff and sore”.

As you can see, we made the most of our first day in Yellowstone.  At night, the kids worked on their junior ranger booklets at the campsite.

D demonstrating how skinny some of the trees were.

n enjoyed reading Bible stories to us at night and asking the questions at the end.

The bathrooms were clean, in case anyone is curious!

The sun stays up for so long up there!  This is what it looked like at 9 p.m. (I had k put up nine fingers so we would remember the time).  Since we went to bed just after 9 p.m., we never even saw the stars!

We did not drive too far out into Lamar Valley because we were all getting tired of sight-seeing.  On the way back we saw another herd of bison.  After this sighting, we did not stop anymore to look at the bison because they were so ubiquitous.  Instead, we were just like, “Oh, it’s just more bison…keep driving”.  Ha!

We did make a stop to see Tower Fall, which you can see after just a short walk from the parking lot.  Nice to see that there is still flowing water in other parts of the country!

More evidence of fires…

Next we went to the Canyon Village Visitor Education Center.

We attended a ranger talk about the “Dogs of Yellowstone”, which includes foxes, coyotes and wolves.

The visitors center had some fun exhibits.

There was also a nice theater where we watched a movie about Yellowstone.

Afterward, we checked into our campsite, which also was in Canyon Village.  We were so glad they have a reservation system!

Talk about a dense forest!

Our campsite was pretty spacious, and conveniently located across the street from the bathroom.

We ate dinner at the Canyon Cafeteria, and it was pretty bad.  I stood in line for a wrap, only to have the employee tell me, “This doesn’t look good, I wouldn’t feel right serving this to you.”  I appreciated her honesty and purchased a turkey sandwich even though I was pretty tired of sandwiches by that point.  We bought one kids meal which came with only two chicken strips and a handful of baby carrots.  I ended up buying a hot dog for them next door.  D  tried a bison sloppy joe, which was ok.  Overall, we were quite disappointed, especially considering that the food was still expensive!

After dinner, we looked for souvenirs, but did not purchase anything.