Grand Tetons and Yellowstone

We arrived in Boulder, Wyoming and passed this really nice RV Park on the way to ours.  We wondered why that one didn’t come up in our search, but on we go.  Ours is, once again, nothing to write home about, but the locations is really good.  We are basically in a gravel parking lot here.  They had great wifi, thankfullly, because we don't have much cell service around these here parts.

In this area they build structures for large birds of prey to build nests.  There is one in the campground.  We really thought it was a bald eagle at first, but after further investigation, it is a pair of Osprey.  Still very magnificent birds.  We did actually have a sighting of a bald eagle, on Memorial Day, on our way to Idaho. It was soaring above the Hoback River in all its glory!  Of course, I did not get a picture of that.

We also had beautiful sunsets at this park.

First things first, we went in search of a cold beverage and Dennis had seen they have a great brewery in Pindale so we went by there and they had a huge sign saying 'Closed for Repairs' - we never did make it in although we did see it later open.  So Dennis had also read about the World Famous Corral Bar.  We went in search of this place.  It was hole in the wall bar and certainly not famous at all.  But they sold yard eggs for $4 a dozen. We enjoyed a couple of drinks and visiting with the locals before heading back with our two dozen eggs.

Next on my list was South Pass City. It is a place I read about in the book our daughter gave us, 1,000 Places to See Before You Die. We headed that way pretty early the next day. It is an old gold mining town that was founded in 1867 and is very well preserved. Wyoming was the first state to give women the right to vote. This town had the very first female judge, Esther Morris. As some of you may know, my maiden name is Morris.  I come from good stock, just saying. 

The mining here only lasted a couple of seasons before safer ways of obtaining the earths gold were found further out west.  We both really enjoyed visiting this place and I highly recommend it if you are in the area.  Funny thing is, we went in to pay our entry fee and found a relative at the counter.  Well, a relative of a relative . . .  We have found a lot of folks familiar with our neck of the woods, but this lady went the extra mile.  So, here is a picture of me and my daughter's husband's counsin's wife's mother, Melanie Jones.  I am sure I have met her before at some of the many birthday parties with this family.  Her and her husband are also full time RVers, but prefer to stay in one place longer than we do.  So she volunteers while they are at some locations.  I may find that fun later on in our journeys.

  

From the ghost town we went on further into Lander, Wyoming.  This town is so cute and I really wish I had more time to spend here, but we grabbed a bite and headed back home.  

They have The Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale too.  We had to go since Dennis is looking so much like one these days.

My very own mountain man

This museum is a really cool place.  I had no idea that the original mountain men were in search of beaver pelts to make hats and coats and such for those fancy ladies and gentlemen in Europe. They had some actual items made of beaver pelt and things these mountain men wore.  This was our first realization that the movie,  The Revenant, was based on a guy from this area.  We are in mountain man territory!

Boulder is near the Grand Tetons so we headed that way next.  These are the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen.  We would like to come and stay a little longer to enjoy this part of our beautiful country some day.  We saw two huge moose in woods feeding, but my pictures came out as just dark blobs, so just trust me. Of course there were also buffalo, antelope and elk in the park.

 

 

We stopped off at the beautiful Jackson Lake and the Signal Mountain Lodge because yours truly had to powder her nose and Dennis wandered down to the lake.  The last thing we expected to see here in the mountains is a sail boat moored in the lake.

We headed off to Idaho after the Grand Tetons.  We stopped for lunch is the most beautiful little town of Victor, Idaho.  I would love to go and stay there for a while.  We had lunch outside and people watched for about and hour and a half before heading back out.  I am gonna remember this place for our trip back home.

We stayed in Island Park, Idaho and it is only 30 miles from the west gate of Yellowstone.  We are only staying a few days, so we have a list of things to see and do and then we are outta there. We stayed at the Buffalo Run RV Park and it was pretty nice.  We did not have sewer, they only have a few sites that do, but with such a short stay I didn't even need to conserve.  Besides, we were gone almost all day every day.

 

We took off early and headed out to see Old Faithful the first full day we were there.  We arrived at the West Gate at 8:30, pretty good for us since we had driven the 32 miles from Island Park and stopped for breakfast. We walked around a bit waiting for the geiser to blow and then found a spot I thought would be a good to watch and video her do her thing.  She blew 37 minutes late.  My butt was sore from sitting so long just waiting.  She burped and passed gas and spewed a little, but I thought she would never go.  I even had to hand off the camera to Dennis.  My arms were tired - for crying out loud.  Anyway, she finally blew and we got the whole thing on video.  Here are a couple of good screen shots, I am sure you don't want to view the entire ten minute and twenty-two second video. So in just under three minutes we went from

this and this

 

and back down to this.

I really expected a lot of noise when this thing blew, but it was not much different during the blow than before and after the blow. You could still hear the splash of the water hitting the rocks it was so quiet. 

There are geisers all over this area of the park, and did I mention they stink, and apparently this particular one is not THE most predictable one, it is just more frequent than the others in the park. They also have these steaming pools all around old faithful and we spent some time checking those out.  The water is so clear and you can tell some of them are extremely deep.  Buffalo roam around in the geisers and nibble all day.  I guess they aren't botthered by the smell.

This guy is right beside Old Faithful. But he left before it blew, 

almost like he knew it was gonna happen.

We were waiting patiently for a while.

Amazing how clear this water is.

These guys just block your path wherever you go.  

You just have to let them play through like the gators on the golf courses back home.

There are other beautiful places to see in the park and here is a spattering of photos.  We only had two days there and that is really not enough.  You also need to get into the park early and stay late.  Pack a lunch.

We saw grizzly bears both days we were in the park.

 

We saw an amazing sunset leaving our first day.

A couple of spectacular water falls

THIS HAPPENED

I am gonna make a puzzle of this shot

These colorful bubbling pools are everywhere

The Travertine Terraces

Rafters and kayakers in all the waters, class II & III rapids here.

 

We were leaving the park on the first day we were there and it took us an hour and twenty minutes to travel twenty-four miles.  We kept swearing if it was just buffalo in a field we were gonna go balistic because they are just about in every field here, right?  A park ranger finally drove by in the wrong lane and suddenly we were moving, but that did not last long.  We got to the problem and the buffalo were actually all over the road heading home for the evining.  We actually encountered them coming back out to the fields the next morning. They were crossing a river.  Two very large males were fussing at each other too but it never came to anything, at least not while were were watching. I was videoing just in case.

Buffalo coming across the river.

This guy tried to go around, but they weren't having it.

All in all we had great fun in Yellowstone. We saw a lot more that we did not get pictures of. There was a fox that ran across the road in front of the car in front of us. It stopped just on the side of the road and froze.  It was beautiful! It had a white face, not red.  I looked it up on the web to make sure and it still is a red fox, but a little different and just striking in her coloring. I wish I had my camera ready.

The animals we saw in the park include the grizzlies, so many bison, plenty of antelope, a few mountain goats, the fox, some elk and some moose. Not a bad haul for the time we had.  

Another interesting thing we saw in the park, and actually starting counting them, were the rented Class C motorhomes.  We saw 20 after 3pm on our second day. Granted some may have turned around and been counted twice, but that is a bunch of rentals.

On our second day in Yellowstone we traveled all the way across the center road and then drove south to the east gate and headed to Cody, WY.  Cody is a town founded by William F. ‘Buffalo Bill’ Cody in 1901.  Buffalo Bill was a legend in his own time.  He spend time as a Pony Express rider, fur trapper, gold miner, and Army scout all before he began his Wild West Shows. He was later even caught up in real estate speculation with a scheme to create an agricultural and tourism center just west of the brand new Yellowstone National Park. And here we have Cody, WY.  I read about Queen Victoria gifting Cody with a redwood bar to go in his Hotel, The Irma Hotel - named after his daughter - and the food is supposed to be great so we were heading there for lunch.  

I saw this bar and thought that is not really such a big deal 

although it may be made of redwood.

Then I realized this was part of the ‘bar’ and it is magnificent. 

Proper gift from The Queen.

This is a pretty cool old - still working - hotel and restaurant.  It reminded me of the Strater Hotel in Durango on the inside.  Hideously loud wall paper and carpeting. 😁

But we arrived at the restaurant they were just finishing up the breakfast buffet and they would have to close and not start their lunch service until 2PM due to an employee shortage. We have seen this everywhere.  It is so sad for the business owners trying to recover from this economic disaster. Being unable to finally fully reopen and not being able to because unemployment is paying low wage earners $15 an hour to stay at home.  Crazy!

After we left downtown Cody we went to see the original site of the town.  Apparently they had to move locations because it was proving too difficult to get water to the population there. The museum is called ‘Old Trail Town’ and it has real buildings from that period that have been moved here and restored.  Several of them had a history with the ‘Hole in the Wall Gang.’  Who is that, you ask?  Well, none other than Butch Cassidy, The Sundance Kid - and others depending on the job at hand.  This area had also taken some notable graves and reburied the folks at the edge of town.  One such famous person was John Jeremiah ‘Liver Eating’ Johnston.  Famously known as Jeremiah Johnston (a mountain man) as depicted by Robert Redford in the movie, Jeremiah Johnston.  Redford even attended the reburial ceremonies and stood as a pallbearer.  We really enjoyed this museum and recommend it if you are into this kind of thing.  The thing that really impressed me the most were these robins protecting their 4 little babies in a nest above the door.  The parents would stay so still when you were near that one lady thought it was a prop. The give away was the kids were hungry and they weren’t being still at all.  Check them out.

Momma feeding them.

Daddy being perfectly still watching over them while Momma went to get more food.

Some other random shots from the museum.

We did explore Idaho a bit while we were there and it is also a beautiful state.  We will be crossing her again up north as we head to Washington.  

Until next time - See ya on the road!