last day in yellowstone

I sit here in my tent.  It was a busy day.  The weather was beautiful, which is more than I can say for it now.  The wind is beating on our tent and the rain is pouring down.  I write this as a draft since Yellowstone does not have wifi and Sprint does not work in Yellowstone.  I have not had any connection to social media in the past three days, not like I post much anyway.   

My son does have service so we did get a couple of messages out so my mother isn't completely worried about us.

We started out our morning at the West Thumb geyser basin.  I will write more extensively on it later as it has some really awesome things.  The Lakeshore Geyser was one of my favorites.  I would have loved to have seen it erupt.  It was underwater today, but it does erupt in the late Summer when the lake isn't covering it.  It's not very active though, it hasn't had a major eruption since 2003.  It does splash a couple of feet every once in a while though. 

Peyton looking at the lake thermal features.

Lake Shore Geyser

Black Pool, more on that later.

Really, another pic.... :)

Our second destination was the Grand Tetons.  They really are beautiful and snow covered.  The summit of the tallest mountain, the Grand Teton, is 13,770 feet.  It's an easy drive.  It's only 50 some miles from one end to the other.  One thing I did notice in the gift shop was that their souvenirs are much more expensive than Yellowstone.  We bought food there and I spent more money than I would have liked.  More on Grand Tetons later.

The Grand Tetons

We visited Mormon Row, right outside of the Tetons. I have quite a bit to write about that one.  It was amazing for such a little community.

Mormon Row

It was around 70 degrees and still snowpacked like this.  This is the drive back to Yellowstone from the Tetons.  The amount of snow is nuts and a lot of the trails were still closed.

Lewis Lake is pretty much one big snow covered piece of water.  Yes, we are all wearing shorts,

We went across the Continental Divide a few times.  This is the one in Yellowstone going towards Old Faithful.

Peytons Mythic Wood Bear is located in Old Faithful Lodge, as well as, very expensive Ice Cream.

Firehole River on the Upper Geyser Basin Trail

We hiked the Upper Geyser Basin Trail.  The Upper Geyser Basin is where you find Old Faithful and an awesome visitor center.  The kids also got their Yellowstone Sweatshirts and Souvenirs there.  We met a little Bison friend on the trail by the Daisy Geyser.  Some jerk face threw a stick at it while we were walking past it.  Thank goodness the Bison didn't even give the guy a second look.  I could have smacked him though.  You leave those beautiful, majestic beasts alone.

We witnessed the 8:03 pm eruption of Old Faithful. It erupted right at 8:03 pm. The Grand Geyser was also erupting at the same time and we could see it.  The Grand Geyser was actually  a better eruption than good Old Faithful.  It went on for 20 minutes.  I was sad it wasn't erupting when we were walking along that path.  It was set to erupt between 7:15 pm and 10:15, so a little less predictable.

Old Faithful

It was getting late but we still needed to visit two other parts of the Upper Geyser Basin: Biscuit Basin and Black Sand Basin.  We drove over there as I did not want to hike 5 miles in the dark with bear warning signs out.  There was one prowling around and hanging about the geyser basin.

The Sapphire Pool

Tanner in front of Sunset Lake

And that's the end of our geyser tour.