Snippets from the Brodies

Yellowstone National Park – July 30th

Yellowstone National Park is massive. So much so that there are several sections to visit, surrounded by long stretches of road in a figure 8 shape. So we decided that as there was pretty much no chance of being able to camp the night in one of the campsites (they book out completely, and very early too), we’d drive one side of each loop road, and camp somewhere outside the park that night. It still took us almost all day!

Yellowstone is apparently the oldest National Park in the

United States

, and is definitely one of the more well known – there were SO many people there it was almost funny! Trying to find somewhere to park at most of the spots was interesting, and the amount of people at some of the places was ridiculous! Possibly a better time to visit would be in Spring or Autumn… But in saying that, it was pretty amazing all the same! Just in terms of wildlife (ie. Bears and moose in particular!) we may have picked the wrong time, it was just way too crowded – as Lawrie said, if you were a bear, why would you hang out anywhere near the roads when you have the rest of the park?

There are heaps of walks even in the parts of the park which we went to, but as it was both crowded and raining on and off, we only did a few of the smaller ones – around the West Thumb Geyser Basin (well, Lawrie slept in the car while I had a look!), the Midway Geyser Basin (Lawrie may have slept again instead…), the Grand Prismatic Spring, and Mammoth Hot Springs. So these areas, as well as the Upper Geyser Basin where the famous Old Faithful Geyser is, are the main thermal areas of the park, while the eastern side of the park (where we didn’t go) has a lot more canyons and lakes and wide open spaces, and therefore a lot more bear (and moose and bison and who knows what else!) territory. So although we didn’t see any of those (even bison, which we were assured that we couldn’t go to Yellowstone without seeing thousands of!) we did see a LOT of areas of thermal activity – Yellowstone has the highest concentration of thermal areas around the world.

There were several geyser basins, some with tiny geysers and some gigantic – Old Faithful is the most well known, and although it isn’t the biggest or most impressive, at about 150-200 feet (45-60m) high when it erupts, it’s the most likely to be seen, as it erupts faithfully around every 90 minutes. As such, there are BIG crowds waiting to see this!

As well as geyser basins, there are many many hot springs and colourful pools or HOT water, some boiling, and some areas of bubbling mud. The water in the hot pools is ridiculously clear, and so much deeper than I would have thought, most looked quite beautiful. Having been to Rotorua in New Zealand before, and seen a lot of bubbling mud and hot pools etc, I was expecting much the same, but Yellowstone was much more impressive with its water clarity and colours, massive amounts of geysers (ok, so we only saw the one erupt, but still!) and most importantly the lack of sulphurous smell! J

What we saw when we pushed through the bushes to see what all the cars were stopped for - clearly those people hadn't been to Rocky Mtns NP!

Part of the West Thumb Geyser Basin

Bubbling mud in the West Thumb Geyser Basin

Awesome colourful pools in the West Thumb Geyser Basin

Geysers in the lake at the West Thumb Geyser Basin

A small part of the crowd at Old Faithful geyser

Some of the crowd waiting for Old Faithful to erupt

Old Faithful

Lawrie heading into the back for another nap...

Pretty deep blue pool alongside the walking track - there were so many!

Beautiful deep clear blue pool in the Midway Geyser Basin

Steaming thermal pool in the Midway Geyser Basin

Midway Geyser Basin

Part of the very colourful Grand Prismatic Spring in the Midway Geyser Basin

Waterfall on our way to the next spot in the park

The parts we didn't see too much of, but were more over the other side of the park

Lower Mammoth Hot Springs

Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming – July 29th & 30th

After watching the Figure 8 racing at the Teton County Fair in Jackson, then having a late night comparing a few travel stories (and vehicles/accommodation) with Wes & Lianna, as we both camped in the driveway, we got going a little later than planned (common theme here?!), but eventually headed to the Grand Teton National Park which is really close to Jackson. While Wes & Lianna were planning to head to a drive through bear park about 1.5 hours away in Idaho, to ensure that they’d see bears, we decided (stupidly!) to take our chances, as surely we’d see some finally in either Grand Teton NP or Yellowstone, which was next on the list! However… Although there is supposed to be a whole heap of wildlife in both parks, Yellowstone in particular, we definitely didn’t see it! Could have possibly had something to do with the fact that there was a whole heap of people and traffic…?

What we did see in Grand Teton included the Teton Mountains as they peeked out from between some clouds, a bunch of bison, the Moulton Barn and other old buildings in Mormon Row over one side of the park, some birds and butterflies, heaps of ground squirrels (which pop in and out of holes in the ground), and some pretty cool views of the mountains from different overlooks near the Snake River.

The Teton Mountains

Bison :)

The barn that we thought was the famous Moulton Barn...

The actual Moulton Barn - apparently the most photographed barn in the world?

There were heaps of these hanging around :)

The Teton mountain range from the Snake River Overlook

Mt Moran from the Oxbow Bend overlook

Then as we were feeling pretty pooped, we found a campsite and settled down for a much needed sleep for a couple of ours, determined that there would be more wildlife out and about later on when we got up! However… when we got up after an hour or 2 it was threatening thunderstorms. But we went for a drive anyway, and ended up seeing not very much at all for quite a while…

How we saw quite a bit of the park...

After that cleared up we drove by Jenny Lake at the south end of the park, and then back to a couple of places we’d been in the afternoon, such as the Oxbow Bend, to see the sun shining through the clouds as it got lower in the sky, but still no wildlife! Lucky the scenery was awesome!

After the sun peeked through again...

Cool colours back at the Oxbow Bend

Oxbow Bend

Tired looking us at Oxbow Bend :)

So we headed back to the campsite and put on several layers of clothing before cooking dinner. Then after waking up in the middle of the night, and thinking about all of the bear warning brochures we had for the park (grizzlies as well as black bears this time), and the bear proof box for food in our individual campsite, we decided to drive to the toilets (yes, very sad, we know) rather than walk, and then kept driving through the park for a while thinking that surely now we’d see a bear or at least something different? Or at least some deer or elk… Turns out the next day while we slept in there was a grizzly bear sighted crossing the road… (but what were the chances of us being at that part at the right time? J) SO from there we headed up through to Yellowstone National Park, stopping every now and then for the road works as they re-sealed the road through the Grand Teton National Park…

Cooking dinner in the cold

Traffic heading out of the park

Jackson, Wyoming – July 28th & 29th

From the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado we headed towards the town of Jackson, Wyoming – but as it was a fair way, we stopped after 6-7 hours for a night at the town of Boulder, Wyoming: population 75. As per usual by this stage of the trip, it took us a fair while to get going after a fantastic sleep, especially knowing we didn’t have too far to go that day, so we took our time then drove to Jackson, Wyoming. We stopped at McDonalds to use the internet and Lawrie had a sleep in the car, then we rang some friends in town and arranged to sleep in their driveway that night which was great!

After heading to their place soon after, we met Keith & Melinda, their 3 very cute little boys (Tyler, Boyd & Monty) and their darling baby sister Kendra! After chatting for a bit we headed into town to have a look around, and saw the antler arches at each corner of the town square – the 4 arches are made from the antlers of the many bull elk that shed their antlers in one winter at the nearby elk refuge area (where the elk come to each winter). There are up to 8000 elk there each year, including up to about 3000 bull elk which shed their antlers each year.

Sunset at Boulder, Wyoming

Jackson Hole ski field, right behind half of the houses in town, including Keith & Melinda's!

Antler arch in the Jackson town square

Ex-bull moose in one of the shops in town

We were in town at the right time to see the nightly ‘shootout’ show too, which I vaguely remembered hearing about, but we had no idea it was on. This is basically a small town shootout with real guns and blanks instead of bullets (duh! But still loud enough bangs!), and there were so many people there! It seems Jackson gets quite a few tourists in summer…

The 'town mayor' in the Jackson shootout show

The 'town sherriff' in the shootout show

The next morning we had the Sunday meeting and we all stayed for lunch at Keith & Melinda’s place. We had decided by then that instead of rushing off to the nearby Grand Teton National Park that afternoon, we would have a more relaxing afternoon, spend another night in Jackson and hopefully catch up with Wes & Lianna (Aussie & Kiwi from our Six Flags park visit) as they came through that night! Rather than sleeping the afternoon away though, we walked up to the top of the very nearby Jackson Hole ski field, Snow King, with Keith as well as 3 others from their meeting (Janell, Donna and Eric), then ran back down some of the ski runs in the pouring rain – a 6 mile (9.5km-ish) round trip wasn’t bad for a Sunday afternoon!

Kendra :)

Terrible photo, but Boyd, Monty & Tyler

Lawrie, Eric, Nicole, Donna, Keith & Janell

Looking down on the Elk Refuge & the (Invisible) Teton mountains from the top of Snow King

Keith, Nicole & Janell

Janell, Nicole & Keith back near the bottom, after running down in the rain...

After warming up slightly and getting dried off, and seeing as the county fair was right next door to the house, we headed over to see the evening show – Figure 8 Demolition Derby style racing! This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like… Different from a demolition derby in that it’s actually a race of 15 laps around the Figure 8 shaped track for each heat, and the winner completes the laps first rather than being the only car to survive. But there are definitely a lot of demolition derby parts mixed in! So Lawrie & I had a great night with Keith, Eric & Janell, watching many cars race until they bombed out or just couldn't go any further J