Driving through Teton and Yellowstone park was so much fun, they are beautiful. The mountains and rivers and forests were so amazing. Yellowstone has a surprising amount of "thermal activity", I guess I didn't really know that. The picture in my head of Old Faithful is of a geyser in the middle of a meadow maybe surrounded by mountains. Probably with a fence around where it actually erupts. As predicted, so wrong. There is steam and sulfur scented smoke coming out of the ground all over the park. Water bubbles out of the ground everywhere. We never actually saw a geyser erupt but the scenery was very interesting none the less. Old Faithful is just one of many, we learned that it is not the biggest or most active geyser, just the most famous.
The kids enjoyed the times we got out and walked around the park. They were a lot less interested in the scenery while riding in the RV. Pictured below is an area where there is a lot of thermal activity, we walked for 15-20 minuets and there was steam coming out of the ground all over the place. Some of it had a pretty strong sulfur smell so we detoured a couple times.
Lots of high mountains also means lots of deep valleys and canyons. We stopped at one place where there was an especially deep canyon. There was a waterfall to the right, out of the picture, we could see it a little but I couldn't get a picture of it. What was interesting to me were the stairs down the other sided of the canyon, how exciting would that have been!
I think my dad really enjoyed the park, if we didn't have an RV full of little kids, I think he would have liked to hike around a lot more than we were able to. My sister said, and I completely agree, it would be so fun to go back when the kids are a little older and spend more than a day. Maybe we can go sometime when Eric and my mom can make it too.
I'm so glad we got to take the detour into the park. It added a couple days onto the end of the trip but was so worth it. I'm glad we snuck in before the season ended and more of the roads and businesses were closed. The day was long and a little rushed but I had a lot of fun.
My brother-in-law hoped to get in some fly fishing as long as we were there. Most of the fly fishing suppliers at the south and west entrance of the park were already closed for the season but there was one place open in Yellowstone that had the things he needed. We dropped him off half way through the park and continued on to Old Faithful without him. The plan was to meet up with him a couple miles down the river then head to Bozeman for supper. Long story short, we dropped him off too far up the river, he had little time to fish, nearly got chased by a buffalo, saw a bear and her cub too close for comfort and ended up running for over an hour to get to the meet up place. If I had to run for an hour at that elevation (about 8200) I would probably not be here to tell the story. Good job Nic!
We headed to Bozeman to meet up with some friends of my brother-in-law. They had a good visit then we got kids ready for bed and many of us went to sleep while Dad and Nic drove through the night across Montana to ... Watford City!!!! Dad decided that since we detoured to Bozeman we could detour to Watford. I love my dad.
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