Yellowstone National Park

We've spent most of the last two days exploring Yellowstone. What a beautiful place!

Tuesday was spent on the east side of the park and we were able to see some of the waterfalls and the "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone." We started at Tower Fall and then worked our way south through the park. Then we also did a small hike down to see the Lower Falls which was really pretty. We were able to stand right over it and watch the water fall over the edge into the canyon.

Here are some pictures from the day:

We camped just outside of Yellowstone and had a really great sunset, which were our "fireworks" to celebrate our Independence Day. :)

Today we went back to Yellowstone to cover the west side. Today was full of hot springs, boiling mud pools, and geysers. The vivid colors around the thermal areas are always so interesting: blues, greens, oranges, reds, etc. It's caused by bacteria. There was one vent inside a cave such that it really looked and sounded like there was a huge dragon in the cave about to breath fire out at us! We got to see Steamboat Geyser today which is one of the largest geysers in the world (although we didn't get to see it erupt; it hasn't erupted since 2014). We also got to see Ole Faithful erupt! It erupts every 50-120ish minutes, We waited about 90 minutes (we had unfortunately just missed an eruption when we got there). But we saw it! I have a video of the whole thing if you want to check it out.

Here are some pictures:

Then we left Yellowstone and drove south through Teton National Park which was also incredibly beautiful. The Teton Mountain range is on the far side of Jackson Lake and it was so pretty!

We were looking for a place to stay last minute and all of the campgrounds we could get a hold of were booked so we decided to stay in a hotel in Jackson, WY. It's a really nice resort hotel with lots to do; I'm pretty sure they do skiing right here in the winter. We had dinner at a BBQ place overlooking the main street and it was really nice. Jackson is a cute touristy town with a ton of things to do and shops/restaurants.

Oh, we also saw lots of animals in Yellowstone! We saw a ton of buffalo and mule deer. On one occasion we think we saw some elk but we lost sight of them too quickly to get a picture. And we had 3 Grizzly bear sightings! The first time we spotted one we were driving and he was snoozing a little bit off the road in the forest. When we drove back through the same spot 30 min later he was still there but up and moving around. Then today as soon as we entered the camp we saw a mama and cub roaming around about 100 yds off the road. I didn't ever get great pictures but you can kind of see them:

Tomorrow we have a big day of driving as we're hoping to get down to Lake Tahoe.