Last week, I shared about our first day in Yellowstone in which we saw bison, the Mammoth Hot Springs, and the Norris Geyser Basin. After staying over in West Yellowstone, we returned to the park from the west and then headed south towards Old Faithful and towards the South Exit, from which we would continue on into Grand Teton National Park.
Before reaching Old Faithful, we stopped at some other geyser areas as well. Old Faithful is the only one that continually erupts though.
This area was very interesting with all the geyser activity!
One area I really wanted to see was the Grand Prismatic Spring. There was a back up getting into the parking lot by the spring, so the kids and I got out of the car and started walking while Dave waited to park. What we neglected to think about was that there was no cell phone service at all within the park – only in areas where lodges were located and even there it was pretty spotty – so we then had to worry about finding each other! Luckily Dave caught up with us. If you go to Yellowstone and are going to separate at all, I highly recommend bringing waklie talkies!
Next it was time to wait for Old Faithful to erupt. It was amusing because there is an approximate time of eruption and everyone sits around on wooden benches as if waiting for a show to begin. At the same time, it was also pretty cool to see!
See all the people? Everyone got more excited as Old Faithful became a little more active until it finally erupted.
After Old Faithful, we passed the Continental Divide sign. Zachary was excited and wanted to see if he could spill water that would partially head to the Atlantic and partially head to the Pacific. He said the water just stayed by his feet. Oh well.
Next stop, Grand Teton. On the Yellowstone map we got when we entered the park, it said that you need to pay separate admission to Grand Teton, so we decided to get a National Park membership. As it turns out, there is no admission booth when you drive from Yellowstone to Grand Teton and therefore we didn’t have to pay a separate admission price.
The Grand Tetons are gorgeous!
There was one area I’d seen beautiful photos of called Schwabacher’s Landing and I wanted to go there to get my own photos. At first, we went the wrong way and ran into a wedding planner setting up for a wedding right there along the stream by the mountains. I’m sure it turned out beautiful! We liked the area we found there and the wedding planner told us where it was that I’d actually wanted to go, so we checked that out too.
That evening, we had a picturesque drive into Idaho to where we stayed that night in Lava Hot Springs. We kept stopping along the way so I could snap pictures. Like of this guy!
And the sunset on the amber waves of grain.
Lava Hot Springs has hot mineral pools, where we spent some time that evening!
So that concluded the Yellowstone portion of our trip. Tune in next week to see where we headed next!