Part 3 - Yellowstone National Park and The Grand Tetons

John & Kenny’s work in Casper, Wyoming, finished and we were looking forward to the next few days exploring. Kenny’s wife Stephanie was flying up from Houston to join us as well. We were meeting her in Salt Lake City, Utah, at the airport as we were all due to arrive about the same time. However when we got to Casper airport we discovered that our plane had been cancelled and they couldn’t reschedule us until the next day. No problem – we just went to Plan B – drive! It took about six hours and we arrived at the hotel to a sleeping Steph at about 1.30am.

We got an early start in the morning (so little sleep!) and headed north to the state of Idaho where we saw the beautiful Idaho Falls. I discovered another interesting sign on the restroom door (the first being a ‘tornado shelter’ sign at the Denver airport). This one was advising patrons to close the door to avoid freezing!

We then continued on until we arrived in West Yellowstone, Montana. So by just after lunch we had driven through Utah and Idaho and had arrived in Montana. Driving into town we spotted an “Indian/wild west frontier’ looking market set up in a large dry paddock and decided to stop and investigate (after all we hadn’t been near a shop for hours!!) The market was set up in a huge circle with all the stalls in tents – it was really interesting with all the handcrafts being handmade by the sellers who were dressed in authentic Indian and frontier type outfits. There were also lots and lots of animal furs.

We had only been there a short time (and hadn’t made any purchases!) when this huge wind blew through – it was quite scary with things flying everywhere and tents falling down and children screaming as the wind was whipping up the dirt which was cutting into their little legs. We headed to the car very quickly trying to escape the harsh wind and not really knowing what was happening and what was going to happen next – I honestly thought we were in a tornado! No sooner had we reach the car than the heavens opened and down came the rain. We left the market people in a state of chaos – hopefully when the weather calmed they were able to retrieve some of their stuff.

We found our hotel and checked in and decided to drive into Yellowstone National Park regardless of the weather as our time needed to be well managed in order to fit everything in over the next couple of days. As we have come to realize over here, the weather goes away as quickly as it arrives and an hour later the rain was gone, the sun was out, the wind had disappeared and we were back to enjoying a very warm afternoon – amazing.

We drove into the park and immediately were in awe of the natural beauty surrounding us. Yellowstone National Park is America's first national park (est. 1872) and is located in Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho – its covers about 2.2 million acres!

Over the next two days we saw deer, buffalo, grizzly bears, a black bear, rivers, lakes, waterfalls, canyons, geysers, hot springs, mudpots, mountains, plains, camping grounds, walking trails………….. It is truly an amazing place.

Old Faithful Geyser -
This geyser is an all-natural phenomenon which tosses scalding water anywhere from 100 to 180 feet into the air and lasts about 2-5 minutes. The interval between eruptions is approx 90 minutes and more than 137,000 eruptions have been recorded. The crowds that gather are amazing – probably a couple of thousand each 90 minutes!!! Of course the whole area has been set up to cater for the masses – selling souvenirs, food & drink – even alcohol. You can actually stay there in this amazing hotel - Old Faithful Inn. It’s a massive building with a balcony where you can sit and watch the Geyser. The building is an exposed log construction – it is gigantic with the central atrium about seven stories high.





The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone
The canyon is approximately 10,000 years old, 20 miles long, 1000 ft deep, and 2500 ft wide. There are 2 amazing waterfalls, one above the other falling down into the river below. There are some great walking tracks leading right up to the falls – we certainly got our exercise that day!

Kenny is a photography enthusiast and once behind the lens seems to lose contact with everything except what he has the lens focused on. He gets some great photos but he also gets way tooooo close to some of the action – eg the black bear!!!! By the time he was aware (probably twigged when the Park Ranger yelled at him) the bear had eyeballed him and taken a step forward – Kenny made a quick retreat to the car and the bear followed coming right up to the car giving us the best view of an animal in the wild! Thank you Kenny – just glad you survived for us to tell the tale! A similar event happened with a huge elk however when we happened upon a herd of buffalo we made sure Kenny stayed in the car – even though we couldn’t get him to keep the window up and his head inside!



We were quite taken with the rubbish bins in the park – they have to be ‘bear proof’ as the bears will seek out food wherever they can!

The Grand Tetons

After a wonderful time in Yellowstone it was time to head back to Salt Lake City via the Grand Tetons – another truly amazing place. Located in northwestern Wyoming, Grand Teton National Park has majestic mountains, rising abruptly from the lakes and plains at their base creating awesome scenery that attracts nearly four million visitors per year.
These mountains are apparently a magnet for the world's top skiers and mountain climbers – its extreme terrain provides opportunity for extreme sportspeople to invent hair-raising ways to do death defying stuff – personally I prefer to just admire their beauty!