Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Best of the Rockies Trek: Yellowstone National Park

We had a bit of a lay in and didn't leave camp till about 9am. First stop was grocery shopping in Jackson. Then we drove through Grand Teton National Park and had lunch at a beautiful spot on Jackson Lake. From there we drove on to Yellowstone National Park.

First stop there was the Geyser " Old Faithful "! Wow, that was really impressive. It squirts so high, and it was so kind as to go off 10mins after we got there. We then all walked around the area to see the various other geysers, all except Patrick, who decided to sit guarding the van! Oh, well, it's his holiday I suppose.

After our hike around and about Old Faithful, we drove on to the Grand Prismatic Springs, where we all got drowned by the hot steam coming off of it. From there we all chose to go straight to the campground.

This was our first night of camping in bear country, which means just about everything except ourselves has to go in the van at night. Quite a chore really. Christian's cooking group did a barbecue and it was delicious, but then we had to make 100% certain, that the " Rost " (grill) was totally meat free.

Well, I slept fine, I am not really worried about bears coming to eat me, I don't think they would be able to make much of a meal of me.

Still in Yellowstone today. We went to Yellowstone Canyon to hike along the rim from Inspiration Point to Artists Point. It all started our great, then a storm blew up, and we all got soaked! And most of us didn't even have raincoats on then as it was sunny, when we left the van. Well the storm kept coming and going and so did we, all the way round, even if it did take some convincing t get out of the van again, after having found it at one rainy break.

The only other setback was when Patrick, who was leading, took a wrong turn and marched us all the way down some steep switchbacks to some viewpoint, which we weren't actually heading for. I never actually got right down (only nearly), someone came towards me and said that it had been the wrong way, so I turned straight back around and went back up!

Oh I forgot, before we actually got to the Canyon, we went to some other geysers (Norris...).

After the Canyon we had our lunch with some huge black crows watching. Actually we were pretty lucky we had any lunch, as Jennifer had to be reminded by Janny!
Then we drove on to Yellowstone Lake (on the way there I saw a beaver in the stream, by the road!) At the lake were more geysers. Two were really different as they were actually in the lake. Legend goes that the person who found them caught his fish in the lake, turned round and boiled them in the geyser. From there it was on to more geysers, although by this time, we were all getting a bit tired of geysers, except Geert, who couldn't get enough. The next geysers were different again, they were called paint pots", and were all pretty pinkish.

Somewhere along the line, we also saw some muddy geysers, but I am no longer sure when. Then it was back to the campsite, where we were on cooking duty. And we made Chili with rice. We were going to have a party with the other Trek, that had arrived, but unfortunately, it really started to rain hard, and we had to abandon that idea. And concentrate on keeping as dry as possible and away from too much metal (the storm was right above us!) In the end it really meant an early night for all of us.

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