Map of our travels

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The Grand Tetons

Oxbow Overlook, early morning. Incredible
view of the Moran Mountain.

We had a slight change in plans and ended up staying a few days longer in the Yellowstone area, so we headed down to Grand Tetons National Park yesterday. Wow! What a beautiful spot. We've been impressed with Yellowstone, but we actually enjoyed The Tetons even more.

Outside The Ranch House restaurant at
Colter Bay Resrot.

The scenery is absolutely breath-taking. We arrived in the afternoon and took a hike near the Jackson Lodge. It was very hot and not much shade on the hike, so it kind of kicked our butts. We checked out the marina to look into renting a boat but it was too late in the day, so we ended up getting a hotel room and staying over so we could see more stuff. There is a whole 'nother blog post comparing hotel stays to RV stays and why we may never to go a hotel again... ever. LOL.

So this morning, Jim and I got up at the crack of dawn (litterall) to try to spot some wildlife, specifically a moose. The back deck of the hotel looks out over a Willow Flats, which is supposed to be a great place to see them, but not this morning. We did watch a coyote trying to catch some geese. That was very interesting.We took a drive to two other potential spots, but didn't have luck there either.

Bike ride along the base of the Teton Range.

One of several glaciers in the park. 

We headed back to the hotel and woke the kids up and got everything packed up to check out. We headed to Jenny Lake, in the south part of the park, to take a bike ride. What an amazing ride, at the base of the Tetons! After a 5-mile ride and a quick lunch, we took a boat across Lake Jenny, which sits at the foot of the mountain range. The boat drops you off right at a set of stone steps that just go up and up and up.. for-ever. We climbed for what felt like an eternity, partly thanks to Maggie's incessant complaining (I never want to hike again. This is the worst day ever. Just leave me here. etc.) Finally after passing Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point and enjoying the amazing views, we got to the the "flat part", which runs through the canyon between to mountain tops. These are canyons formed by glaciers. The canyon views are some of the most amazing things I've ever seen. The mountains just loom over you and sweep up so high that it makes you dizzy. As our mouths were gaping, we saw some people down off the trail, clearly watching something in the trees. We stopped to see what they were watching and it was a HUGE BULL MOOSE!!! WOW!!! We watched him for awhile and gawked at the gigantic antlers he was hefting around. What an amazing experience. Unfortunately, the trees were pretty dense and it was hard to get a good picture.

The girls on the boat on a three-hour tour.

Smile Conner.

So after that excitement, it was time to head back down to catch the boat back. It took much less time to get down than it had to get up. haha. That pretty much finished up the Tetons for us. We headed back to Yellowstone and are tucked in for the night, glad to be "back home" in our trailer instead of a really overpriced hotel room. We spent more in 24 hours staying at a hotel then we spend in a week in the trailer, between the hotel room and restaurants, it was a fairly stunning difference. We hopefully won't be doing that again anytime soon.

Smoke from two forest fires. 

Before the hike. I can tell because we're not
exhausted yet. 

Approaching the mountians.

One of many breaks on the hike.

Hidden Falls

Great view of Jenny Lake.

The "steps" leading to Inspiration Point.
Don't look down!

Inspiration Point.

There is a moose in there somewhere.

The Canyon. Pictures can't capture the
enormity of it. 

Earthquake Lake

Earthquake Lake. These trees have been
submerged for 60 years.

We started off the day with a morning boat ride and fishing trip. Once again, the fish of Hegben lake are safe from the mighty Cawley fishing clan. We had a good time trying, but came up empty. Each of the kids took a turn driving the boat, which they enjoyed and we got a different view of the lake. The sky was much clearer today. It rained some last night. Maybe that helped clear out some of the smoke, but it's the clearest day we've had since we got here.

After lunch, Jim, Kate and I headed to Earthquake Lake, just down the road from Hegben Lake. It's an incredible thing to see. In August, 1959, there was a 7.5 magnitude earthquake centered just a few miles down the road. The quake caused a huge landslide, basically the entire side of the mountain slid into the Madison River. It causes hurricane force winds to sweep through the valley, blowing away cars and bulidings, then caused a huge tidal wave that swept what was left away. There was a campsite right at the bottom of the mountain that was buried in rubble, and the rest of the valley was under water. The landslid also cut off the river and instantly created a 4-mile lake, Earthquake Lake.

It so so strange to see. The trees that had been along the river are now, of course, underwater in the middle of the lake. They are all dead, but they are still standing there, 60 years later. You can also see the "Ghost Village", which is the remnants of a resort. The cabins and lodge were washed about 1/4 mile downstream in the surge and came to rest on the opposite side of the water. It's all very surreal and pictures don't do it justice.

The lake. and you can see the missing part of
the mountain int he upper right. 

Closer view of where the mountain slid. 

This is the mountain the fell into the river.

This is another shot of the the slide area.
This picture is from the opposite side of the valley,
standing on top of the debris field.
86 million tons of rock anr rubble. 

When the mountain let go, the whole thing
went in one big piece and was traveling
over 100 mph. It hurtled into the valley
and 400 feet up the mountain on
the other side. The visitor center and
memorial are on the opposite side
of the valley, built on top of the
debris field. 

So tomorrow, we leave the Yellowstone area and head to Helena to visit Julie, Dan, Megan and Alex for a few days!!!

We stopped for dinner at Buffalo Bills,
where you eat in covered wagons. LOL. 

New Campsite

Lake Hegben

 Today we packed up and left Grizzly RV Park which was right in downtown West Yellowstone and moved to a different RV park, Yellowstone Holiday RV Park, about 20 minutes outside town, on Lake Hegben. And when I say on the lake, I mean ON THE LAKE. It's supposed to be one of the best lakes for fishing in the area, but no luck so far.

The area is also know for a 7.5 earthquake that happened here in 1959, which caused the highway to fall into, and dam up the Madison River, and create a new lake, Earthquake Lake. We are going to check out the visitor center there tomorrow, after we try some more fishing.

More Lake Hegben

The taco bus, a restaurant INSIDE an old
school bus, complete with seating.

The view from our campsite.

Moving in.

Conner did all the hooking up when we got
here. He did a great job.

A Day in West Yellowstone, Montana

Very impressive grizzlies

After two very long, full days in the park, we decided to stick around town today and take it a little easy. West Yellowstone is right at the gate to the park, so of course, there is a lot of tourist attractions here, shopping, restaurants, a few attractions, etc. They have a lot of bike trails and it's a very bike-friendly town. We rode our bikes from the RV park to town and headed to the Yellowstone Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. This non-profit refuge takes bears and wolves that can't survive in the wild. They do some neat programs with the animals, especially the bears, including a lot of research into bear activity. One neat thing we say today was they were testing a backpack for certification as bear-resistant. In order to be certified bear-resistant, an item has to survive 1 hour of "paws on" attempt to open it. They filled this kevlar backpack with a fish, peanut butter, jam, fruit, and other good-smelling stuff, and let the bears have at it. It was fascinating to watch this guy work on the pack: jumping on it, throwing it, holding it under water. He didn't get it open, so it passed. They also had a display of various items that didn't pass, trash cans, recycling cans, and "bear-proof" trash cans.

He reminded me of my Bubba. :-(

So we learned a lot about bears and wolves today and the kids enjoyed it. After the center, we did some shopping in town, then Jim and I took a bike ride on some of the trails outside of town. Fun day again!

Evening snack of popcorn on the cob,
from The Corn Palace.

Wolf pup den. 

Majestic. It was like he posed for
this picture on purpose. 

Maggie "at school" in a cute shop in the building
that used to the be the grade school in W. Yellwostone.

Tomorrow we are checking out of Grizzly RV Park and moving to another RV park outside of town on Lake Hegben.

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

We spent a really LONG day in the park today. Our first stop was the Canyon area, which includes two gorgeous waterfalls on the Yellowstone River. After taking some pictures at Artist Point, we took a hike along the ridge above the river... really really HIGH above the river. I don't know if I've mentioned the altitude difference here, but we really noticed being 7000 ft higher than we are used to at home on this hike. Short steep uphill climbs had us gasping for air, even Jim, who hikes all the time. It is a really remarkable difference. 

After the falls, we went to Fishing Bridge and checked out Lake Yellowstone. WOW! Big lake. It was almost like being at the ocean, with waves! Absolutely gorgeous, even though the smoke from the wildfires in the area made it look more like LA then Yellowstone. We thought it was smoke from the Idaho fires, but found out later, two of the fires in the park had picked up speed and were produce "impressive columns of smoke". 

Back on the road around 7:00 seemed like a good time to do the entire upper loop and search for wildlife. We did see bison... A LOT of bison. Many of them were crossing the road and blocking traffic, which was amusing for the first 20 or so minutes. Eventually we made it through that traffic jam and headed north. We did see some elk and more bison, but no bears or wolves. :-(

We also talked a woman who works at Fishing Bridge. We learned that the park service has RV parks (with full hookups) for their seasonal employees! hmmmmmm.. She and her husband both work for the park during the season, then go back to Florida for the winter. How cool would that be?!?!?! Full-time hobos. I like it!

The Lower Falls

From Artist Point

Can you see the falls in the background?

The Upper Falls

Bison... lots of bison.

At Yellowstone Lake

Yellowstone Lake

Bison Traffic Jam

NPS Bison Wrangling Prius

Not in hurry to get out of the way

This guy was about 10 feet from the truck

Elk 

First full day in Yellowstone

Whew, am I tired!! We spent a fairly full day in the Old Faithful area of Yellowstone. We saw it erupt three times, each time was very different. The kids did the Young Scientist program, which took us three hours. It's a great program. The kids get a book they need to complete about the area, from making a hypothesis to testing it and reporting your conclusions. They got to take temperatures of the hot springs with a laser thermometer, which was REALLY cool. Some of them were close to 200 degrees!


We also took a bike ride around the geyser basin, which was a quicker way to see a lot of the thermal areas. But wow! 7500 feet above sea level is a lot different than 1000. One mile felt like five.

Working on Young Scientist.

Morning Glory Pool

Old Faithful

Geyser Basin

Getting their badges

Tomorrow we head back, maybe to the canyon area. Stay tuned!