Yellowstone National Park

We started our day in Cody, Wyoming. We had stayed at a Mom and Pop type hotel last night which turned out to be a very roomy place. Everyone had a bed and plenty of room to move around.

We ate breakfast at a McDonald's with all of the locals and bikers that were in town and then headed for Walmart. You know that you have reached some sort of civilization when you find a good 'ole Walmart. That was a stop for poptarts, OJ, and waterbottles. We weren't sure of what our options would be for breakfast for tomorrow, so we thought a cold poptart would at least fill us up.

We headed into Yellowstone National Park about an hour later and were amazed by what we saw. There were lots and lots of Kodak Moments to say the least. The first wildlife we saw were some big horned sheep just standing on the hillside; we then watched them walk onto a large bank of snow. Then the excitement started. The bison were out. Jacob and I had to take a picture of everyone that we saw. Finally, there were herds of them. They weren't countable anymore.

At this point, we were on the Northeast point of Yellowstone Lake. We stopped at the visitor's center, and everyone got there passport stamped. We walked down to the lake and took some pictures. It's amazing that we saw, what I call, Christmas trees on the shore of the lake. Absolutely beautiful.

When we left the center we drove up to the upper and lower falls. They were breathtaking. These are the falls that are usually shown in pictures and on TV.

Originally, we were to drive the upper loop of Yellowstone, but we changed our minds. We were only about 15 miles from Montana and four of us had never been there, so we decided to go. We drive through West Yellowstone, Montana just to say that we had been there.

The next major stop was Fountain Paint Pot. Here we walked a loop around some boiling mud pools. The kids weren't too crazy about the sulfa smell, but they loved what they saw. We literally saw the ground boiling and spitting mud. One of the pools was named "The Dragon" and for good reason. The venting made a horrible roaring noise. I guess a dragon could sound like that.

The next couple of stops involved viewing geysers. The landscape changes so drastically here. Beautiful grassy fields, rolling mountains, boiling mud pools, and ground that has hydrothermal activity with spewing water. We eventually made it to Old Faithful. It erupts approximately every 93 minutes, and we watched twice. We knew that there was a webcam at the top of the visitor's center that looks out over the viewing area and of the geyser, so we called Bonny and Barry's parents, and they were able to see us. Technology is amazing!

In between the two eruptions, we walked into the Old Faithful Inn and ate a quick bite for dinner. For you Disney fans, this was one of the hotels that was a model for the Wilderness Lodge in Orlando. The similarities were obvious.

We left Old Faithful and finally exited the Yellowstone National Park and entered the Grand Teton National Park. We could see these mountains from Cody, but the closer we got, the bigger they got.

We did see a huge grizzly bear on our way out of the park. I quickly decided that he was big enough for about 5 bears and that I didn't care to see anymore. That huge thing sauntered right across the street. I guess it is his territory, and we are the visitors; I don't mind staying out of the way. My goal for the rest of the evening was to see a moose. We saw one on the way into the park, but there was no pull-off. He was just a blur in my lens. I have seen no moose today.

We arrived too late to go to the park's visitor center, so that is first on our list tomorrow. We are to take a raft ride down the Snake River before lunch. We are really looking forward to that.

We are actually staying in a cabin tonight in the park. We have stepped out of the door a couple of times and have had deer between us and our van. We have to abide by all park rules, so our food and drinks have to be stored in our vehicle. This cabin has no telephone, no TV, no kitchen amenities, no A/C, and no Internet. We are, however, close to a "guest lounge" that is a common room, and it has wireless access. So, we have been able to eek out a weak wireless signal in our cabin. Since it is so hard to have good bandwidth, I won't be posting any pictures tonight. I will try to post some extra tomorrow night. We will have full internet tomorrow evening.

Until then . . .