Driving to Jackson, WY
As we've been driving across the country, I've been slowly crossing things off my bucket list and today we are actually going to knock off two!! I've always wanted to go to Yellowstone National Park and I've always wanted to see the Tetons in the summer...I've seen them in the winter when we would go skiing out there. Anyway, today we had about a 4-5 hour drive from Butte, MT to Jackson, WY and let me tell you...the entire drive was GORGEOUS!! Absolutely fabulous! I would almost be willing to pick up and move out there if it wasn't for the nasty winters!!
Anyway, we finally made it to the Northwest entrance to Yellowstone which is right on the Montana-Wyoming border. Our plan was to simply drive around Yellowstone and then to drive south through the park and into Teton National Park and on to Jackson Hole. We must have arrived at Yellowstone just in time because not too long after we got into the park, we saw a whole bunch of elk just grazing around near a river. Of course, we had to get out of the car and take a million pictures...but after a while of staring at a bunch of oversized deer eating grass we decided it was time to move on. As we drove through the park, we stopped at various scenic spots to take pictures and to just sight see. Yellowstone itself it such a unique place in that almost the entire park is inside a GIANT volcano. The mountains surrounding the park are actually part of the volcano rim...which is kind of a scary thought...but it definitely creates some very interesting terrain. One of the most famous places is of course Old Faithful...or Old "not so" Faithful as Brian and I like to call it since we weren't able to see it spew water up into the air. Although we didn't get to see Old Faithful blow, we were able to go see some neat places that looked like they came straight out of the jurassic era...all over the park you can find areas where lava is so close underground (relatively speaking!) that the streams/springs are literally boiling cauldrons! There were places where the mud was boiling and making all these weird gassy gurgling sounds and where water was just spewing out of the ground! One of the neatest things was all the pretty colors the sulfur makes in the water but what wasn't so pretty was the smell! Most of these neat, bubbling places were pretty stinky because they contained a lot of sulfur from the volcanic activity.
After we got our fill of volcanic scenery, we decided to get down to business and to go hunting for some buffalo and grizzly bear. We had heard that our best bet was to drive around to the eastern side of the park where the prairies are to find some buffalo. Although it was kind of out of our way, we figured why not! The drive was beautiful as we went along side Yellowstone Lake and over to the flatlands. Almost as on cue, when we got to the flat lands, there was a buffalo hanging out in a dirt pit on the side of the road...if you didn't sit there and look at it, you would probably think it was fake cause he just sat there still as could be watching the cars go by. It seemed kinda weird to see a buffalo all by himself so we figured a heard of buffalo couldn't be far...so we kept driving. About a mile up the road, the few cars in front of us came to a stop for no apparent reason. After a few minutes of wondering what was going on, we finally saw it...it was a Buffalo Jam. A heard of buffalo had literally taken over the road and just clogged it up...it's like they knew what they were doing. The funny thing was, they were just on our side and they were sauntering down the road slow as molasses, completely in control of all traffic going their direction. I guess on buffalo finally got fed up with the cars passing them and going the other direction, because one decided to cross the yellow line and just stood there staring at the on coming traffic. Now both ways were blocked!!! I don't know how many of you have seen a buffalo, but they are big...real big...and they could do some serious damage to a car, not to mention a person so we followed the rules and tried to stay away. We were literally sitting there with the engine off for about 10 minutes when all of a sudden we see this big buffalo running through the woods towards the herd that was already in the street...it must have been some kind of dominant male thing because the one that was running and one from the herd in the street decided to have a face off. Eventually, when their little tiff was over and they decided to get out of the way and we had to drive past them, I got a little nervous because I thought one might freak out and just ram into our car but they decided to be nice and just stared at us as we drove past.
As we drove the trees started to disappear and the prairies started to open up. Not too far up the road, we saw a whole bunch of cars pulled over which, we learned, was a red flag for wild life. Curious, we pulled over to see what was going on. Maybe some more buffalo, some elk...who knows! To our surprise, it was a momma grizzly bear and her two bear cubs! They were kinda far across the river, but we could still see them! We sat there and watched them forever and we even kind of turned into stalkers as we would drive down the road to get a good seat so we could get a good view when they headed that way! After about an hour of watching the grizzly and her cubs, we decided that we should start heading towards Jackson since it was about 6 pm. We had to drive back through a heard of stubborn buffalo again, but they didn't give us nearly the trouble they did earlier. Unfortunately, it got dark before we made it to Jackson so we didn't get to see the Tetons that night although we could kind of make out their silhouettes. As we drove into Jackson Hole (Jackson is the actual town, while Jackson Hole is technically the ski resort town), a sense of excitement came over me! I couldn't wait to get up in the morning to see the scenery and to get out and about!
Icky bugs all over the car!
Statue of "Mary of the Rockies" overlooking Butte, MT
A cave where Louis and Clarke would stay during their expeditions.
People were fly fishing all over the place...there were so many beautiful rivers and streams!
Saw tons of people traveling via bike...they had all their gear on the back.
Pretty stream right outside of Yellowstone
Restaurant we ate at before we went to Yellowstone with a map of the park in the background.
Good milk shakes!
Elk!
Just beautiful!
Brian was trying to really immerse himself in the outdoor-man persona by not shaving... hence the scruffy face:)
Boiling stream
Sulphur springs
Boiling mud pit...all I could think of was the movie "Land Before Time"
Spewing geyser
If you look into the distance, you can see the ground steaming. We actually weren't allowed to step on this area (I was standing on a boardwalk) because the ground is so hot.
Old Faithful...
Just hanging out by himself...
Oh here's the rest of his herd...clogging traffic.
Vida freaked out when Brian got out of the car...she had to keep an eye on him!
So it was really hard to get a good picture of the mama grizzly and her cubs but here is a good shot of one of the cubs. The mama is to the left of the cub back in the bushes and the other baby is near her but he's harder to see.
Buffalo herd
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