Back to it!
(writing this on the 15th, looking back)
I think I slept in quite a bit that morning. I want to say it was pretty cold. I can’t even picture the campsite, funny enough. It was a forest service campground, but I can’t remember what it looked like or what it was called or any of that.
The image in my mind is completely blank. 🙃
So we got a pretty late start on the day, but that’s okay. After driving over the past into the Jackson Hole valley, We took the early left and headed into Grand Teton National Park, taking the road that’s nestled against the foothills.
If you haven’t been there before, If you’re coming from the south, the drive-thru Teton National Park on the south side is mostly a drive through the trees with hills on your left and trees on your right, the hills on your left blocking the view of the Grand Tetons themselves.
I want to say that maybe it’s a 10 mile drive like that?
I have no idea, really, and after a while, the road curved east, such that the angle of you was decreased, and a view of the Tetons opened up.
Those mountains truly do comprise a breathtaking range. 😊
As usual, I stopped the van and gazillion times to jump out and take pictures, or sometimes just to take pictures through the driver’s window. I take a lot of pictures because I know that when I’m traveling along the mountain range, or particular view of some kind, the different views of that spectacle I’ll have unique appearances, and I don’t want to miss any of the angles, thus potentially missing out on additional spectacular views.
So I have a bazillion pictures in my phone right now. Thousands. 😅 I know that because Google just reminded me that I have something like 3400 or 3700 unbacked up photos on my phone. 😅 I also often take several pictures of the same Vista, so I have lots to go back through to delete, but oftentimes the lighting is such that I can’t really see on my screen how good the picture is because everything is so bright, so I just take a whole bunch of pictures and hope that one or more of them capture the grandeur or the beauty of the scene in front of me.
My mom mentioned that when she had taken her trip to the Tetons with her parents many many years ago, that they had stopped at Jenny Lake and had taken pictures from across the lake looking at the mountains. She mentioned that it was absolutely gorgeous.
So we went over to Jenny Lake, but it wasn’t what she remembered. It wasn’t the same like that she had gone to before with her parents. Gratefully, though, it turned out to be an absolutely beautiful place on its own. We stopped there and took pictures, and then we got some food out of the van and went over to a picnic table at one of the picnic spots that lets you look out across the lake with a mountains immediately on the other side of the lake.
Again, it was simply beautiful. I absolutely love those kinds of vistas. I know you already know that. But that’s where my heart is. It’s those vistas that are my home.
I don’t really know why, honestly. My earliest memories of life aren’t in states that had mountains. It’s not like those were my home originally and I’m longing to get back to that home. Connecticut, as a very small child, was just woods in a brook running through the trees. Ohio was just a suburban neighborhood that, to a young child like myself, still had enough trees to make it feel like there were some adventurous and wilderness areas, even though it was mostly just suburbia.
Mountains didn’t really make it to the picture until I moved to Utah. But even in Utah, we didn’t really spend any time in the mountains that I can remember. My only excursions to the mountains that I have any memory of is a youth in my first few years, at least, in Utah were as part of the boy scouts.
So I’m not really sure When or how mountains with rivers and forests all amalgamated into one scene became my heaven on earth.
But went together, they are. And I don’t mean Arkansas mountains, those little bumps that barely register as hills in my vocabulary. I mean the towering, craggy peaks high above the tree line.
Anyway, that’s one reason I love the Tetons… And the northern Rockies.
Back to Jenny Lake. 🙃
We had a fun little picnic at Jenny Lake. We had a little chipmunk and a large raven come and join us for lunch. I know people don’t like it when you feed the local animals, but I just… Love those little creatures.
So I feed them. 🙃
After Jenny Lake, we headed over to Jackson Lake, which was where my mom’s memories of the view across the lake actually came from. It was also beautiful, but to be honest, I definitely preferred the views from further south, from Jenny Lake and before.
We took pictures again at Jackson Lake, a few different places, I think. Definitely gorgeous views. And then we pointed the nose of the van toward Yellowstone, leaving the Tetons behind until… Who knows when…
Multiple bucket list have been enjoyed on this trip– Lake Tahoe, Crater Lake, Glacier National Park, the Grand Tetons. 😊
Just as we were getting into Yellowstone National Park, the rain started to come down a little bit. There were some beautiful picture moments as we were coming up north from the south entrance, looking out over lakes to the horizon.
I don’t think I was able to capture exactly what I was hoping to capture, but it was still beautiful.
We stopped off at a few beautiful vistas along the way, waterfalls and what not, snapping more and more and more pictures. 🙃
During our last stop before going to Old faithful, as we were taking pictures, we saw old faithful erupt in the distance.
Crap. 🙃
We missed it, by just a few minutes. 🙃
I was disappointed, mostly because if we wanted to watch interrupt again, would mean waiting a decent little while.
We would find out later just how long we would be waiting. 😅
Having missed the eruption, that gave us time, however, to find a bathrooms at the old faithful visitor center complex, and find a place to fill up our water. We had gotten far too low on water and needed it badly, so it was good to get ourselves all filled up.
once we were done with the bathroom in the water, I started eating a little bit , and then we ran into a lady who said that the next eruption was going to be in the next 15 to 30 minutes or so.
So we waited.
The rain, which had led up for a little while, had returned, and the sun was going down, and the wind was blowing a bit, I think, and it was definitely very cold.
About 15 to 30 minutes went by. As did another 15 or 20 minutes from another person’s report as to when it was supposed to erupt. Finally, someone showed up who said he had looked at the schedule as reported by the national parks people and it meant waiting potentially yet another 30 minutes or so.
In total, I think we ended up waiting over an hour right there beside Old faithful. But we waited. 🙂 And eventually, after the sun went down, and after it was almost dark, the old girl erupted. I think that’s the second time in my life I’ve seen old faithful erupt.
Looking back, it’s funny, it’s just one of those things that you kind of go to to say that you’ve seen it. Sure, it’s cool, but there are so many more interesting and inspiring sites. But I guess it’s kind of nice to be able to set a clock to the geyser and be able to actually see a geyser, whereas going to others, you might not be able to actually see one erupt since they don’t follow schedules like Old faithful does.
Oh, I forgot to mention that as we are pulling into the old faithful complex, there was a bison right there on the side of the road, literally just a few feet from our car as we drove by. It was a one way road, and I didn’t want to stop right there in the middle, and at that time, I was still trying to figure out what to do about seeing old faithful.
Anyway, after we left old faithful, we headed over to the only campground nearby that was open. There were only two in the entire park that were open at this time of the season. We didn’t figure we’d have much luck, given that everyone who went there was going to be cramming themselves into those two campgrounds, and the one that we were nearest to was also quite close to the West Yellowstone entrance. We figured that would probably make it even more likely that people would choose that campground.
Gratefully, however, we were wrong, and my mom was able to secure a little spot for us. It might have helped that we didn’t require any power hookups or sewer hookups or anything like that. Just a place to park for the night and access to a bathroom.
And that was our day, our trip to Tetellowstone. 😊
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 