Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks redux

(Mammoth Hot Springs peak)

I was tired last night and didn't give a full re-counting of our time in Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Tetons National Park. So here's some more details.

The first day was cloudy when we arrived and cleared up by the time we got to Old Faithful. There were a couple of hundred people sitting around on the benches at the perimeter waiting for the geyser. It isn't exact, but about every 3 hours it goes off. It was almost as much fun to watch the crowd as the geyser!

Something else that hits you is the smell of sulfur from the erupting steam pools. It also makes beautiful colors in the rocks and steam pools when it mixes with the algae that was really hard to capture on film. I need some pointers!

The second day was the reverse, clear until late in the day. We were able to walk up to Mammoth Hot Springs (puff, puff) which are mostly dried up these days. It must have been spectacular in the 1920's. It still has the great views of the mountain peaks.

We got back to Fishing Bridge campground about 4pm and it began to snow before sunset.  I had the blind open and sat and watched the snow for a couple hours.  When we woke on Saturday, we had about 3 inches of snow on the ground.

We headed off to Salt Lake City in a blizzard, through Grand Tetons National Park.  It was scary for me but Mike's driven a lot in snow and though we couldn't see more than a couple car lengths in front of us for a while, it let up as we got through the park and out on the highway.
After getting beat up driving, we opted to take a hotel night in Salt Lake City where I could catch up on work and Mike could get a good night's rest.

It's somewhere we'll go back to again sometime to see the mountains in the summer. Who knew the end of May would still be winter?