Days 265-268 - Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

We spent four days in a nice RV park south of Grand Teton National Park.  We had hoped to be able to park in Yellowstone itself by only a few campgrounds were open and none offered RV availability. As it turned out we were better off where we were as we discovered it was about as centrally located as we could get for all the things we wanted to do.

The views of the Tetons from our campsite were amazing--huge mountains rising right out of the plain and straight up into the air!

We headed north about one hour into Yellowstone the next day and spent the next nine hours on the east and north side of the park.  There we viewed the falls (the trail to the lower observation level was closed due to late snow.  The falls were tremendous with so much water from the huge snowfall this last winter.  The place was crowded with early season toursits.  As usual we were amazed at the number of Korean and Chinese visitors!

We enjoyed a picnic lunch on the canyon edge before heading further north over the Continental Divide and into the Mammoth Hot Spring area.

We drove back south at the end of the day passing through the geyser valley scouting out tomorrow's adventure.  The following day we headed back into the park and this time to the west side to see Old Faithful and its companions.  Today it took almost two hours to get back into the park and the place was swamped with folks.  The geyser walk was great and we covered better than 5 miles of trails viewing geyser and hot pools.

On our third day we decided to visit Grand Tetons and take a hike up into the high ground.  We decided on Inspiration Point.  The trail was busy with lot of hikers so even though there were bears everywhere, we didn't see any.  The rushing creek dropping down into the lake below was stunning and the almost six mile round trip up 1500' took about four hours.

On our last day we headed to Jackson Hole, a famous ski resort and took the aerial tram to the top of the mountain.  The views were spectacular at 10,300' and the tram ride was a lot of fun.  The resort was only an hour from our camp and we spent the whole day enjoying the views and the amazing clear skies.