Sorry for the radio silence over the past couple of days. We were lost in the wilderness! Not really lost, exactly, but just outside the reach of cell signals and internet access, doing some primitive camping. We drove from Montana into Idaho, because Jack wanted to show me his favorite trout stream, Henry's Fork of the Snake River. He had fished it some years ago with his fishing buddy, appropriately
named Bud, and caught the biggest trout of his life there, 24 inches long. In particular he wanted me to see the huge spring where the river bubbles out of the ground, in the middle of a volcanic caldera 23 miles in diameter. Trout spawn in Big Spring and you can see groups of them (no fishing though!). It was a charming spot.
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| This is a flashback photo that we forgot to put in earlier--our first glimpse of the Rockies on the drive to Montana, always a thrill. |
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| Big Spring, where Henry's Fork of the Snake River begins. |
We looked at some other stretches of Henry's Fork while in Idaho and did some birdwatching in Harriman State Park, spotting the rare trumpeter swan, a good one for our life list!
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| Trumpeter swan, found here and just a few other places in the world. |
We camped in Idaho and next morning drove into Wyoming. We were very close to Yellowstone Natl Park but had just about decided not to go into the park this time due to the negative things we'd read about how bad the traffic is and how overcrowded it is this time of year. We'd visited Yellowstone some years back, in September, and absolutely loved it, so it was hard to pass it up. We decided to "drive by" and check out the lines, and discovered that they didn't look all that bad, so we ended up making a plan to drive through Yellowstone into Grand Tetons National Park (which conveniently adjoins Yellowstone) and try to find a camping spot in Grand Tetons (which can be hard to come by, as this park is also pretty crowded this time of year).
It worked out for us! Yellowstone had a lot more traffic this time than it did during our last visit, but it wasn't "terrible." We didn't run into big traffic jams like those I'd read about, but we stayed away from Old Faithful and the other popular spots where the parking lots looked full. Yellowstone is gigantic, and there are plenty of places to get off the beaten path. And it's just SO DANG COOL!! This has to be my favorite national park. It's got jaw-dropping scenery, scads of wildlife, the most bizarre natural wonders ever seen anywhere (and for Jack, some of the world's best trout streams). In our short drive we saw a bull elk, hundreds of bison, mule deer, American white pelicans, sandhill cranes, antelope. And the geyser basins and steam vents are always spectacular. (Old Faithful is just one among thousands of geysers in Yellowstone.) The big fires that burned through here not too many years ago left lots of dead tree skeletons, but natural reseeding has created new trees everywhere. We stopped at many spots and walked, and looked, and photographed. This blog is going to be mostly a photo album of the past couple of days of sightseeing, since we took so many pictures and it's hard to leave any out!
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| Close encounter of the bison kind. (Note our rearview mirror on the left.) |
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| Jack at the Fishing Bridge in Yellowstone (fishing not allowed off the bridge anymore). |
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| Lewis River Falls, on the way to Grand Tetons. |
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| Carol watching the Lewis River as it heads for the Snake River. Here are some of the tree skeletons from earlier fires in Yellowstone. |
After oooing and ahhhing our way through Yellowstone, we drove south into Grand Tetons Natl Park, past our namesake Lewis River and its spectacular falls and rapids (actually I think it was named for Meriwether Lewis). This is our first time to the Tetons. We had glimpsed the mountains from Idaho and had a clue that they would knock our socks off when we saw them up close, and they did. This park is definitely all about these mountains--you can't escape them and you don't want to. The high jagged teeth of the Tetons just rise up from flat land--no foothills at all! Volcano-born and glacier-carved. They don't look real! Beautifully clear lakes reflect them throughout the park. After taking photo after photo, Jack and I started competing for the artsiest photo--lying flat on our backs or on our tummies to get some flower or shrub into the shot.
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| View from Grand Tetons National Park marina. |
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| Artsy photo by Carol. |
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| Artsy photo by Jack (he was supposed to level up these horizons in his photo app but forgot) |
We didn't see a lot of wildlife in Grand Tetons, although supposedly the
wildlife is here, but we really enjoyed looking at this place. There
are 12 glaciers in the park, and we were able to see two of them lodged
way up on the sides of mountains. We drove the scenic loop and it has to
be one of the top scenic drives we've ever made.
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| Falling Ice Glacier is the U-shaped blob of ice just under the vertical black crack (which is filled with old lava)---one of 12 glaciers in this park. |
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| This is Grand Teton, the highest peak at just under 14,000 ft. |
We got one of the last campsites in the Park, at Lizard Creek Campground, which is supposed to be one of the top 10 campgrounds in the West, according to the campground host, who may have been slightly biased. But it was wooded and quiet and on a lakeshore with a view of the mountains; no electricity, cellphones, or showers, and no generators allowed... but only $11 with our National Park Senior pass. (I still can't believe that for just $10 senior citizens like us can purchase a pass that gets you into any national park for free for the rest of your life, not to mention major discounts off campgrounds on any federal lands--has to be the best bargain we've ever gotten.)
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| The Snake River and the Tetons, the last photo we took of these mountains. We want to be sure we don't forget them... |
Hope you forgive the extreme number of photos this time... Next, Jack will regale you with his fishing experiences.
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