Welcome to the second post in our yellowstone travels. This post covers all of the touring around we did during the trip - lots of wildlife, thermal features, and exploring. There were a couple of day hikes, but mostly we were just driving around…
Our first stop was Mammoth Hot Springs - where we hiked around on the Travertine terrace and Sara got her first introduction to thermal features. I think it took a couple of days to sink in, so her reaction was a bit mutted.
Next we headed to the Lamar Valley for wildlife viewing and a short day hike. We were rewarded by tons of bison, a coyote (probably not a wolf, but there was some debate there, and lots of birds/ground squirels.
We saw this injured Coyote from the road limping along. There was some debate about how it might be a wolf - but the facial structure and ears were most likely a coyote. Pretty cool to see, but sad to see the injury - definitely reminds you of how challenging the wild can be for animals…
Next was our Lamar Valley day hike, which included a minor Bison Stampede! As near as we could tell, they just got going down the hill and as soon as one of them started running the rest joined in. We got to the top of the rise, and they were clearly not being chased by anything. This valley was amazingly beautiful and I would love to go back at some point and do a longer/multiday trip into the valley. So much wildlife and you could just tell that it got more amazing (and remote) the further up the valley you went.
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Bison Stampede!
Sara was quite the hiker - and hit a brick wall when she got back to the car. :)
We left on our backpacking trip the next day (which will be my third and final post in this series). Once we got back, we headed down to the Old Faithful inn and the geyser basin area. Sara learned all about Thermal Features - including why we don’t step off the boardwalk.
Sara got really excited about Geysers - this one in particular.
We spent the night at old Faithful inn - I only took one picture, but the place was quite unique.
And of course we saw old Faithful go off a couple of times.
We took a day hike the folling morning through the geyser basin and looked at all of the geysers and hot springs. Really an amazing place - I remembered a bit of it from when I was a kid, but most of it was like I was seeing it for the first time - expecially with Sara actually seeing it for the first time. We did a short hike and saw all of the geysers and hot springs in the old faithful basin.
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Morning Glory springs was Sara’s favorite - lots of colors including “all of our favorites”.
We wrapped up Yellowstone by early afternoon (knowing that we had only seen a small fraction of what Yellowstone has to offer) and headed down to the Grand Tetons National park. This park was even more amazing when it came to wildlife.
We saw this Grizzly on the side of the road - we were way too close, but we were in/near our car and felt safe. That being said, we got some great pictures and moved along. Right as we were leaving, the Park Rangers showed up and cleared people out. We have a “Bear Jam” was the radio call. When we drove by later, they had the whole area coned off and weren’t letting people anywhere near the area - probably so that the bear didn’t get too used to people being around. The bear also had a radio collar in the pictures - so he was being tracked.
We saw a second grizzly as well in a river bed - this one was a bit further away and didn’t stick around for long.
We saw a Moose as well - he ended up crossing the road so we saw him pretty up close. Definitely wish I would have brought my DSLR for this - would have gotten better pictures in the low light.
We did a short kayaking trip while we were there and saw some birds and beautiful scenery.
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We also did a short day hike up to Taggert lake. I think Sara was getting tired of hiking at this point, so she struggled a bit. Pretty crowded trail, but the lake was beautiful.
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Our last night was in Jackson hole for a dash of civilization to round out the trip.
We also found a fun National Parks beer (there was a whole series of them from this brewery). What a great idea.
