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Sunday, August 14, 2011

Yellowstone and Grand Teton Vacation Day 1 - July 16th

I am finally getting around to our little vacation recap. I'm doing day by day because overall we (or Colt really) probably took about 2,000 pictures and videos which is hard to narrow down. He was in charge of the camera and I had my little point and shoot to take videos.
We flew out early on Saturday, July 16th, into Jackson Hole and got shuttled into town to get our rental car. We had a bright red Hyundai and Colt said it was like driving a golf cart around. We should've took a pic at the end of our trip because it went through a lot on our little vacation. As soon as we got there, we went to the grocery store and bought water, snacks and stuff to make sandwiches so that we didn't have to stop and eat out every single meal. We planned our trip to stay three nights in Yellowstone and the last two in either Grand Tetons or Jackson Hole. Luckily, we were able to make last minute reservations and were able to spend all our three nights at Yellowstone inside the park. We booked our first two nights at Canyon Lodge and our third at Old Faithful Inn. Canyon Lodge amd the area around Canyon Village up to Lamar Valley was by far our favorite. We weren't too impressed with the Old Faithful area. It was way too crowded!
Our plan for the first day was to go up through the Grand Tetons into the South Entrance of Yellowstone all the way up to Canyon Village where we were staying. We didn't think we would have near enough time to see everything along the way but we crammed a lot in that day and pretty much saw everything!
The weather was GREAT, especially compared to the heat that we've had in TX. It was about 78 during the day and first thing in the mornings it was about 40. 
Entering Grand Teton National Park



This is when we took a little turnoff and ended up at one of the raft launch sites along Snake River. We weren't sure if our little car was going to make it back up the steep hill to the main road.




The first wildlife that we saw, Bison

Antelope
Jackson Lake




Further down Jackson Lake

The photographer of the trip






And the Entrance to Yellowstone


I pretty sure this was Moose Falls right when you enter the park



and he always had to climb either up or down just a little farther








Lewis Falls and Lewis River


West Thumb Geyser Basin which overlooks Yellowstone Lake



These pools were so hot that you could just feel the steam coming off of them














These are right at the edge of Yellowstone Lake










Bison on the side of the road
Lake Yellowstone

Mud Volcano area



We took some amazing videos of this









This one you could here rumbling in the cave and it would shoot out



Uprooted trees as a result from all of the geothermal activity


Falls outside of Canyon Village







Grand Canyon of Yellowstone







We were definitely getting tired by this time... if you can't tell by what I look like!

and I am not quite the photographer that Colt is
When we made it to Canyon Lodge, we checked in and had dinner that night at the main restaurant there in Canyon Village. It was good food and surprisingly the prices were very reasonable and comparable to if you were eating at home. There was no air conditioner in our room which worried us for a minute but you don't need it. We slept with our window open and it felt great. Plus we had a stream running behind our room so it made it even better!

The outside of Canyon Lodge

Double beds was all that was left when we made our reservations.

And the view outside our window

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