Sunday, June 30, 2013

Thank goodness for 64GB memory cards...

This will probably completely shock you, but we woke up at around 5:30am to get ready and get the car packed. I wheeled our luggage cart out to the front of the hotel and started loading the car quickly. Was this my eagerness at getting to Yellowstone? Was this my attempt to show off in front of my wife? No, folks, I got the luggage off the luggage cart as quickly as I could because I didn't want someone coming up to me and asking how many nights we stayed in town. It would have been embarrassing to say anything less than two weeks based on the luggage we had on the cart, and we were only there one night. At this point, I'm pretty sure we didn't forget anything. I'm wondering if we should have pulled a trailer...

We got on the road at about 6:30am, and we had about a two and a half hour drive to Yellowstone in front of us. We had arranged to meet our guide at the Madison Junction Ranger Station at 10am.  The scenery on the drive was unreal. Natural beauty surrounded us. We made six stops along the way to take pictures...

Stop 1....Beautiful Teton mountain range
Stop 2: Our first bison sighting
Stop 2: More bison
Stop 3: Gorgeous lake and mountain view
Stop 4: We're actually leaving Grand Teton National Park, but we cheated and hopped across the road to the entrance for a pic.
Stop 5: Entering Yellowstone
Stop 5: It's not even 9am yet and I've taken 8.3 million pictures
Stop 6: Another bison grazing on the side of the road
We arrived at the station at about 9:45am; enough time to get our hiking boots on and lather up the girls and ourselves in sunscreen. We filled up Camelbacks and bottles with water for a nice day of sightseeing and hiking. Amy, our guide for the day, had us pile into her van and off we went.

If you have never been to Yellowstone, I highly recommend spending a few days here. We covered a lot of ground our first day....I'll sum it up in pictures:

Haley looking up at a wall of lava. Did you know that Yellowstone is an active volcano??

Our first hot spring sighting. The water in the spring is over 200 degrees! You can see it boiling.
Over the hill from the hot spring we happened upon a herd of bison. They were looking pretty mangy with their half-shed winter coats.
Emily and Ashley checking out a trumpeter swan. The kids are really enjoying all of the wildlife.
Fountain Geyser. Except for Old Faithful, geysers are pretty unpredictable. We were lucky to see this one going off right as we came up to it.
Lunch at Old Faithful Inn. This Inn is unbelievable. It was built in the early 1900s and it is stunning inside. Here, we are waiting for Old Faithful to erupt.
Thar she blows! Old Faithful can reach heights of over 180 feet.
Ashley photobombing my picture of a geyser. LOL!
One thing you learn in Yellowstone is.....if there are a ton of cars pulled over to the side of the road, you should pull over, too. There is usually something very cool to see. We saw this beautiful elk about 50 yards from the road.
And sometimes.....you don't even have to pull over. This guy walked right by our van! Such an incredible sight.
What a day! We thoroughly enjoyed our first day in Yellowstone. Our guide dropped us off back at the station, and we got in the truckster and headed to our condo, which is in West Yellowstone. West Yellowstone is a small town right across the Montana border, so we ended our day crossing our fourth state border.


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