We headed to the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park for the last major leg of our travels for 7 nights of camping and exploration in the area. These two parks are basically adjacent and together are such a large area that even with many many walks and hikes and even with the 5 nights I've previously done in the park back when I lived in Wyoming in 2004 we didn't even drive to all the roads or see all. There is a tonne of backpacking to do here and I look forward to returning.
We started with 2 nights at Jackson Lake in Grand Teton and enjoyed the campground at Coulter Bay. Teton unlike Yellowstone is all about the mountains. Gorgeous backgrounds followed us and next time I'd love to canoe and hike them. We enjoyed the cool dips we took as we have not seen many natural lakes on this trip! Although we did see a few far away bison and some moose it was actually the old settlement of Mormon Row that we particularly enjoyed. Volunteer docents had set up a settler learning area where we could dress in 1860s dress, wash clothes, make rope and toys and learn about settler life and work. The kids were thrilled and spent hours there. We also fit in a muddy bike ride, dodged a thunderstorm and took one more dip in another lake.
People had warned us that Yellowstone would be unbelievably crowded and they weren't wrong for at least the geyser basin area. A park ranger infomred us that 5.4 million people visited the park last year! We think Yellowstone should implement a few of those free shuttle buses for the busiest areas to help with the lack of parking and congestion. But it was worth the crowds to see it. We saw Old Faithful go 3 times and saw numerous incredible and varied bubbling mud pools, paint pots and smaller geysers and partial eruptions of big geysers. Chris and my parent both caught big explosion of less reliable geysers which was pretty cool. I really enjoyed especially some of the colourful hot sprints and the different colours and formations formed from the living organisms that inhabit these hot areas (thermophiles).
We recommend making sure you walk beyond geyser basin and we really enjoyed the strange world of porcelin basin and the steamboat geyser.
After 3 nights at Madison Campground all together, my parents took the kids in their campground down to Fishing Bridge in the south of the park and Chris and I went to a smaller (and gorgeous) northern campground called Slough Creek near the Lamar valley, the "Seregeti of North America." If you are worried about seeing bison in this park--don't be. There are 7000 and they are at capacity. We saw more than 1000 in our one day in the Lamar Valley.
Our campsite was a nice respite as we had the longest we'd ever been away from the kids (2 nights or 40 hrs). There were badgers, bears and bison in the campsite and we hiked and hiked. We had some close encounters with bison and Rusty grouse and petrified trees and alpine wildflowers. This whole trip we've been chasing the Spring and we're still in in it it seems with mountain wildflowers and thunderstorms.
By the time you read this we'll probably be home. We're now jetting across Montana, Idaho and Washington. It's been an amazing trip but 'the best journeys are circular: the joy of departure and the joy of return.' Expect the next post to be our high (and low) lights from 4 different perspectives.
Look forward to seeing you soon.
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