Summer adventure day 6 - Yellowstone & Grand Teton

We stayed the night in West Yellowstone, Montana.  This was our third state on the trip.  Luckily they had a great sign to take a picture with.

 

Our first stop on Thursday morning was Firehole Falls.  I thought that Claire would like this because you can park right by it - no walking!  I also remember taking a picture of Claire and Andrew here, but I can't find it, very frustrating.

 

 

We were headed towards Old Faithful and planned to make a few stops along the way.  However, as with the day before, two of the areas were too crowded to even get into the parking lot.  One of the spots was Grand Prismatic spring which is a huge very colorful hot spring.  So we kept driving until we could find a less crowded area.  Along the way we saw a buffalo in the field with the hot springs behind him. 

 

We stopped at lower Geyser basin and saw this multi colored spring.

 

We also saw a fumarole which only has steam and no water.  It was really loud!

 

 

Fountain geyser was going off when we got there.

 

The next area was Biscuit Basin.  One of the hot springs actually runs into the river right near the parking lot.

 

Sapphire pool was so clear and blue. 

We saw many more colors of algae, from orange....

 

...to yellow.

We crossed a river on the path to the pools and the water was so clear you could see the fish and the plants growing in the bottom.  It also helped that it wasn't very deep.

We finally made it to Old Faithful.  It was around lunch time, and we should have eaten first, but the geyser was scheduled to go off in 30-40 minutes. 

 

We decided to wait instead.  Danny and Andrew waited in the sun on the benches, while Claire and I hung out in the shade.  They are on the left side of the picture.  You can see Andrew in his red hat.

 

This is what the geyser looks like between eruptions. 

 

Claire and I finally moved up to the front.

 

And then it finally went off.  The crowd was cheering.

We got a lot of pictures of this event with multiple cameras.  It only went off for about 3 minutes.

We still hadn't eaten, but I thought we could see a few things before lunch.  That turned out to be a mistake because everyone was hungry, hot and tired.  We made it to castle geyser and sat down for a while and then had to turn around to look for food.

After lunch and a visit to the gift shop we went to the ranger station so that Andrew and Claire could get their Junior Ranger badges.  We had been doing things for the past two days so that they could earn these.  We were able to learn a lot of facts about the park with them. 

Our last stop in the park was West Thumb geyser basin.  We wanted to stop here because there are geysers and hot springs along the edge of a portion of Yellowstone Lake.  The lake is very large, you can't see across parts of it.  These multi colored pools are my favorite.

 

I love this picture with the reflection of the trees on the water.

 

Very few of the boardwalks have rails like this one.  It would have been scary with Grant.

 

A view across the lake.

 

Again, the hot water pours into the lake.

 

It started to rain while we were walking.  Claire is the only one who brought her coat on the walk.

 

 

This geyser basin had a lot of different shapes and colors of pools.

 

Walking back to the car in the rain.

 

We stopped at Grant Village for a snack.  We were hoping they had a T-shirt that said Grant Village, but we couldn't find one.

 

Our next stop was Grand Teton National Park.  We drove over the Continental Divide three times on the way out of the park.

 

We got to the park later than we had planned because there was road construction.  Plus it was a fairly overcast day, so we didn't get great pictures of the Tetons.

 

 

We still really wanted to take the kids on the boat across Jenny Lake.  We made it just in time.  It seemed like it was going to rain and Danny ran back to the car to get our jackets.  We only had about 40 minutes on the other side of the lake in order to catch the boat back.  We could have walked the two miles back around the lake, but I think it would have been dark by the time we got back to the parking lot. 

 

So we walked as fast as we could so that we could see the waterfall.

 

It is behind this rock in the picture, there didn't seem to be a way to get the kids safely in the picture with the waterfall.

 

Then we hurried back to the dock to catch the boat.

 

The kids loved the boat ride.

 

A family picture with the Grand Tetons.

 

We pulled over in another spot on the way out of the park.  It is so pretty here, I wish we had gotten here earlier or spent more time here on another day.

 

We finally got our picture with a Wyoming sign - state #4.  This was the end to a long day of walking in the sun.

 

We checked into our hotel and ended up staying at a much nicer place than we normally would have due to the fact that we made the reservations so late.  Andrew and Claire stayed on Murphy bed, they thought this was very cool.  Oh, and the doll came with us to Yellowstone and Jackson as well.

 

 

Meanwhile back in Rexburg, my mom and Natalie took the kids to a lake near Rexburg.  It was a big hit with the kids.  There was lots of sand and water to play with.

 

Apparently, Grant thought it would be fun to pour water all over Mateo repeatedly.  Mateo didn't care, so this continued for a while.

 

 

Trucks are a must when dirt or sand is involved. 

 

Since my mom didn't get to go to the gardens with us at BYU-I, they went back on Thursday afternoon.  At least it isn't only me that struggles with the group picture.  Check out Mateo in the back.

 

So sweet!

 

We planned to go river rafting in Jackson on Friday and were excited to see what Andrew and Claire would think of it.