Road Trip - Part 5

Well, we have made it home from our long journey. It was a wonderful vacation.


Last Thursday we arrived back at Grand Teton National Park after having spent two nights in Yellowstone National Park.


It is a beautiful place. Unfortunately, it rained most of the afternoon, so we were not able to take a scenic boat ride around the lake. When the skies did finally clear, we were able to see this view.



It the picture above, there is a moose. He is very difficult to see, but he's there.

I zoomed in on him to get a better look. We were quite excited to see a moose, and we saw several more the next day as well.




We splurged a bit on our room for the last night. We had the bottom room where Bailey is standing. When we checked in, the upstairs rooms weren't cleaned yet so we couldn't get one of them. In hindsight, we should have waited for one of those rooms.




Here's the view from our patio though. Still beautiful despite the clouds covering the tops of the mountains.



This little guy (we named him FredBob) lived outside our patio. He was fun to watch dart around.

Here's a bird that was in the valley.

When the sun was setting it was a magical place. I stood outside forever wishing a bear would walk by. There are lots of bear sightings in this area, but we were never lucky enough to see one.

This is the outside of the Jackson Lake Lodge. This faces the valley in the picture above. We had the best dinner there that night.

Still no bear. Darn.

So, we are now home. I am slowly working through mounds of laundry and I am facing going back to work tomorrow.

Here's some random thoughts from our trip. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone else.

• If you go to Yellowstone, book a room early. I booked our rooms back in January and my choices were limited back then. Same thing with the Grand Tetons.
• There are no televisions or internet service in Yellowstone. I'm fine with that, but I had told my boss that I would check in with work occasionally - which required internet service. I'm not complaining, it's just something you should be aware of.
• There was only internet service at the Grand Teton Lodge - not in the rooms. Also, no television available.
• Make your dinner reservations early as well. I was aware of this and made our dinner reservations about two months ago and even then I only had the choice of 5:45 or 9:00pm. People who did not have a reservation were turned away. There are "fast-food" type places available, but you will most likely have that for lunch so a nice dinner was welcomed. And it was a really nice dinner both nights. We were very surprised at how good the food was at the two different places we ate dinner at in Yellowstone.
• If you go to the Grand Tetons - I recommend you splurge on a room with a view - and on a dinner at the Mural Room which overlooks the valley. No matter how much I like nature - I am very well aware that I also like to be spoiled.
• One thing that Rominal would have liked to do differently was to not have to change hotel rooms so often. Because we drove from Texas to Wyoming and then back, we stopped a lot along the way. This meant that we were unloading and loading all of our suitcases each night. Rominal would prefer to fly to our next destination and stay in one place for more than one night.
• No matter how surly your teenage daughter is at home, she becomes charming and personable again once she is out of the state. She even would let me put my arm around her as we were walking - something that would never be allowed at home. This trip helped us connect again if only for a week.

I'm already thinking of next year's trip. I'm thinking of something along the lines of flying out to Yosemite National Park and renting a RV and driving all around there, but Rominal is thinking of something more along the lines of Disney World.

I want more nature and he wants more lights.

Can this marriage be saved?

Road Trip - Part 4

To continue our road trip stories - we left the Grand Tetons and arrived in Yellowstone on Tuesday (I think - the days are blending together for me).

Someone was nice enough to take our picture in front of the sign.


If you have never been to Yellowstone, it is an experience that is very difficult to explain. As you walk around, there are parts of the ground that has water boiling up from the earth. The smell is very similar to rotten eggs, due to the sulfur in the water.


We saw all kinds of wild life. Here's a marmot that popped out from some rocks to say hello.


We hiked up a trail to get a bird's eye view of Old Faithful. From this vantage point, we could see the surrounding valley. Also, you can see all of the people that gather to see Old Faithful go off.



The buildings you see above are the visitor center, and the Old Faithful Inn. Yellowstone is the first National Park and some of the buildings are very old.

A nice couple from England took our picture up at the top of the hill.



Later that day, we went to a different part of the park where we overlooked Yellowstone Lake. The boardwalks are placed for everyone to walk on - because the ground is so unstable in this area.


Here's an elk with some fuzzy antlers. We saw tons of elk all over the park.

Here's a spot where the water just suddenly starts boiling up into the air. Very strange.

We drove around in the park and came to a valley where the buffalo and their new babies gather. These guys (and galls) are huge.

I'm taking these pictures from my van. Rominal was driving and I was standing up through the sunroof of our van taking pictures. There are quite a lot of warnings all over the park of how people get gored by buffalo each year and how you are not to approach them.

Some people don't head those warnings and tried to get closer to get a picture. This guy even brought out his baby!

Here's what the valley looks like - again this picture was taken from the safety of my van.

We drove out of the valley and ran into the biggest traffic jam I've ever seen!

I couldn't believe it - so much traffic in a national park!

Well, it wasn't your usual traffic.

We got stuck in at least 150 buffalo moving down towards the valley that we had just left.

It was simply amazing. This was one of the highlights of our trip.

The buffalo just kept coming and coming. They would simply walk around the cars.

We were there for at least 30 minutes as they passed.

Towards the end of the group, this big fellow came through. He was so large, bigger than all of the others.

I took a picture of him after he passed our van, to try to show how much bigger than our van he was.

We have now started the long drive home, but I still have tons of pictures to post. It's been a fantastic vacation and quite an adventure.

I'll post more once we get home, and I've gotten some of the mounds of dirty laundry done.

Road Trip - Part 3

Wow - what a couple of days we have had. Right now I am sitting in the Jackson Lake Lodge because that's the only place that has internet service. Rominal is trying to do some school work and I thought I would post a couple of pictures.

So - a couple of nights ago we stayed at Colter Bay in the Grand Tetons. Unfortunately, the weather has not been that great. It has rained every afternoon we have been here.

That didn't stop us from taking a little stroll through the woods along the lake. Here's Rominal and Bailey. And of course, I've taken this picture from behind because I love how it's not posed.

This is the rustic cabin we stayed in. Emphasis on rustic. It rained during the night and hearing the rain on the tin roof was nice.

We saw this critter along the road. I'm not using a telephoto lens here either - we were this close to the deer.

Many of the hiking trails were either closed, or had this warning posted. Kinda scary. I'm still ever so hopeful to see a bear while we are here though. People keep telling me that they saw one.

Here's a rare moment when the clouds cleared and we could see the tops of the Tetons. For the longest time, Rominal and Bailey didn't believe me when I told them that there were mountains there.

Bailey took this picture of me and Rominal.

There's so much more to tell - and I've taken over 700 pictures so far. Tomorrow we start the drive back home, stopping along the way. I should be able to post more tomorrow night.