Today I lesuirely made my way from the RV Parking lot in Grand Teton to another monsterous, but slightly nicer campground in Yellowstone. At least this one feels like a campground, but it’s still too crammed in. Too many sites all to close together… to many huge motorhomes everywhere. No wildlife about. There is a seperate tent camping area here, but it was full, although walking through it it doesn’t really look any better than where I’m at. On a postivie note at least there are available campsites here for those that drive in without reservations, which often is not the case in Yosemite.
The day started in Grand Teton National Park with a drive past Jenny Lake which was quite beauitful. Some day I’d like to come back and hike the canyons behind it. There is actually a ferry service across the lake for hikers that want to skip the hike around the lake. After the lake, I drove up “Signal Mountain” which promised a great view of the whole valley, but from the lookout you could really only see eastward, which is away from the Teton’s themselves, and not as dramatic a view as you’d expect. The view was also obsucred by smoke in the sky from wild fires buring to the east. In fact those same fires were obscruing the view of the Tetons as well. From just below the look out there is a little trail which I couldn’t take because of the dog. I think from that trail you could see westward toward the Tetons, but there wasn’t much point in it due ot the smoke. Since with the expection of a short walk around the parking lot at Crater Lake Tucker spent all day yesterday in the car I thought he’d like a little play time. So we drove up 3 miles up a rough dirt road to the edge of the National Park which is where the National Forest beings. For those that don’t know pretty much everwhere that isn’t paved in a National Park is off-limits to dogs. National Forests on the other hand are the complete opposite, with most allowing dogs off-leash so long as they are under voice control. Yeah! We just took a short hike up a small river, but Tucker was so excited running back and forth he at least quaderupled my distance. He loves running and playing in the water, and it was good for him to get a natural bath too. Doggie play time mission accomplished it was finally time to head to Yellowstone
We made it into Yellowstone around 3pm. On the drive in from the south enterance I took in a couple beauitful waterfalls in Lewis Canyon and then made my way to Old Faithful. Wow! Old Faithful is lame, but everything else around it is amazingly super duper cool. Really, Old Faithful isn’t that lame, I mean it is a gyser that shoots water up in the air with amazing predictablity and regularity, but the other thermal features really are way cooler, or hotter if you prefer. There are beautifully colored pools tand constantly bubbling gysers that are just facisnating and breathtaking. IMHO, they are way more interesting and worth while. Tucker got to come see Old Faithful erupt, although he was even less impressed than I was. Unfortutantly he couldn’t walk on the rest of the boardwalk that meandered through the rest of the gysers and pools so he was bansihed back to the van while I explored. After a couple hours in the Old Faithful area I thought it’d be nice to find a campsite before sunset for a change and headed to Madison (the campground). Although I almost didn’t make it before sunset due to an Elk that was posing for photograhpers just accross a creek.
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