USA - Yellowstone & Tetons - 2019

Next part of our wandering through the western part of the USA, more specifically, visiting both Yellowstone Nat. Park and the Grand Tetons, before spending a few days in and around Salt Lake City and finally returning to Vegas for a flight to the east.

The route track map below shows the actual entirety of this last portion of our travels within the USA.

Final part of our travels in West USA

Yellowstone National Park

Now most people will most likely have heard of Yellowstone Nat. Park, the first Nat. Park ever created in the world, because it’s featured in many documentaries, usually highlighting the wildlife found in it.  It was founded on 1^st March 1872.

So before starting this, a little background on what we went through trying to plan our visit to Yellowstone.  

Yellowstone is big… very big at 8,991 sq kms or 3,472 sq miles.  It has 4 entrances in the Nth, Sth, West & East and the main road, once you have entered the park is called the ‘grand loop’, which is more like a figure 8., visible on our actual route track below.

'Figure 8' of road network through Yellowstone

Off the grand loop are side roads to the 4 entrances or other attractions and within Yellowstone there are many accommodation locations either in the form of campgrounds for tents, RVs of all sizes and very large hotels or cabin complexes.  

The hotel and cabins cost a lot with because they are located within the park and due to our current exchange rate made staying always inside the park… quite expensive.

So the planning challenge we had was:

1.    Where do we enter the park from Salt Lake City?

2.    Where do we stay during our visit within the park?

3.    How do we best cover the attractions within the park?

4.    How long did we need to do this park justice?

Well we decided to take 6 days to cover just Yellowstone and thought this would be more than enough, but to be honest, it was barely enough… anyway I’m jumping ahead.

After the overnight stop in Salt Lake City, we headed north again for a full days drive, including a scenic byway detour to Mesa Falls and stopped for another night in a town called West Yellowstone, near the west entrance of the park.

Upper Mesa Falls

West Yellowstone had all the feel of a cowboy western tourist town, with an outdoors feel, lots of rustic timber homes everywhere, outdoors clothing shops and obviously thriving off its proximity to Yellowstone.

LOTS of western style outdoors clothing stores in West Yellowstone

We had however elected to enter the park through the north entrance, so next day after about 4 hours driving; we reached the small town of Gardiner, with the north entrance into the park visible from its main street and the Roosevelt Arch standing proudly sentinel like nearby.  Roosevelt provided a lot of support to Yellowstone.

President Teddy Roosevelt memorial arch outside Gardiner built 1901 

We stayed 2 nights in Gardiner because the cost of staying there was considerably cheaper than within the park itself.  Gardiner was another very nice town; also with a very laid back feel to it.

Now is a good time to introduce you to George… our guide!  Guide I hear you say, yes we had a guide but in the form of an app called ‘GyPSy Guide’ on the phone.  

We bought the ‘GyPSy’ covering the area being visited, downloaded the offline content for it before we left home and started the app when we entered the park with ‘Location’ turned on.  

Voila… George started talking to us whenever we neared a scenic/interesting location, gave us tips about best parking spots, shared a range of park history and other facts, very slick indeed.  

In fact, George suggested lots of places to visit that were both worthwhile and not mentioned in the Nat. Parks own material.  George was fabulous and made our whole visit significantly easier.

This was important because Yellowstone is VERY popular, unless its in the middle of winter, and this means having to contend with very large crowds and we do mean, crowds… quite often having to wait in a queue of cars for a parking spot to free up.

We did quickly learn though that the early bird(s) catch the parking spots because Americans seem to like later breakfasts.

In Vegas it was around 42c and by the time we headed into Yellowstone for the first time, the temperature was now ~10c.

Our first foray into the park was the afternoon we arrived into Gardiner by visiting Mammoth Hot Springs and it’s indeed mammoth.  Here was our first lesson in crowds due to a lack of parking spots.

Being later in the afternoon, we headed towards the eastern entrance and the Lamar Valley, regarded as prime wildlife spotting territory.

It was also here we had our first encounter and not the last, with bison.  Now all wildlife has right of way on the roads as you would expect and when a herd of bison decide to either cross the road, walk down the road or graze next to the road… the immediate affect is a traffic jam.

Bison grazing next to the road

This is either because you have to stop for the bison or because people are stopping before driving past them to take photos out of their car windows… yes we did it also!

When Bison take to the road... everything stops

A large male bison can weigh up to 900+ kgs and a female up to 540 kgs so you do need to take them seriously because they are known to get a bit grumpy and ‘nudge’ things they don’t like.

We also managed to see a large male elk with a full set of antlers, some mule deer and a few bald eagles, but the latter too far away for meaningful photos.

Male elks were in rut or wanting to mate which makes them dangerous to be to close too

At one point within the Lamar Valley we came across probably 70+ cars all park off on the side of the road, their occupants outside with binoculars or large spotting scopes or cameras with massive lenses, all pointing in the one direction.

“What’s up there” we asked?  “There had been a wolf and 2 grizzly bears high up on the hill ridge!”  For a moment we became excited but then the word ‘had’ struck a bell.

It was here and then repeated later we learned that to see 3 of the animals we were keen to see in Yellowstone, seemingly so abundant in documentaries; you need a LOT of good luck, or a guide or very good devices to see them a loooong way away or all of the previous.

Male and female mule deer

Will let you down very gently right now because during our 6 days in Yellowstone we didn’t see any bears, or wolves or even moose for that matter.  

We also learned via George there are fewer than 800 grizzly bears in the whole of Yellowstone and less than 100 wolves, which had to be re-introduced in 1995 after being killed off by early trappers and settlers.

What there is in abundance within Yellowstone are huge amounts of natural beauty and scenery to admire and thoroughly enjoy.

One of the attractions most people come to see in Yellowstone is Old Faithful the geyser which erupts in a fairly predictable manner, so now is a good time to explain that Yellowstone has probably the highest number of thermal attractions per sq km anywhere in the world.

Small geyser and very hot spring are amongst the thermal attractions

Why you might be asking, very simply, because Yellowstone was created by and is sitting on one of the worlds super-volcanos, the sort of volcano which if it erupted in real ‘anger’ would most probably and very rapidly change the earth’s climate and impact its animals, including humans, for quite awhile.  There are about 20 super volcanoes in the world.

So underneath Yellowstone is a LOT of that molten stuff which heats up the  underground water to either create a large number of geysers scattered within the park, large hot springs, hot bubbling mud pools or something they call fumaroles.

Hot gooey mud

There are walkways through many of the thermal attractions within and close by them.  The Nat. Park’s people and signs stress constantly… never leave the walkways but people have done so and a number have died from severe burns after falling through the very benign looking crust.

Walkways around some of the attractions

So during our daily travels within Yellowstone, let us share some of our favourite scenery attractions despite the constant crowds.

Mammoth Hot Springs  - a large complex of hot springs, hence its name, sitting on a hill of travertine, created thousands of years ago

A very small selection of what can be seen at Mammoth Hot Springs

Norris Geyser Basin – location of acidic geysers which are rare, Steamboat Geyser is highest in world but is un-predictable, so we walked through the associated Porcelain Basin.

Norris Geyser Basin

Tower Falls – 132 ft or 40 metres high and in the canyon

Quite spectacular

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone - canyon is approximately 39 km (24 miles) long, up to 370 mtrs (1,200 ft) deep and up to 1.2 km (.75 miles) wide… its quite a sight.

Various views of Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

Artist Point – is a viewing overlook point on the edge of a cliff on the south rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, first named in 1883.  It looks out over the lower falls flowing into the canyon… stunning.

There are various places to view Artist Point and there are all beautiful

Middle Geyser Basin - Many many months before leaving on this trip, there was a seeming aerial photo of a sight in Yellowstone which looked very surreal.

This was something we had to see, so I would like to introduce you to the ‘Grand Prismatic’.

It was near freezing when we reached the car park and started our small trek on another obligatory walkways, but in front of us was fog… lots of it, so much so you could barely make out people on the same pathway.

Fog, steam and more fog around Grand Prismatic

The cold air and hot water of Grand Prismatic were producing copious amounts of fog… damm!  Whilst standing on the walkway looking at not much, by chance we heard a man nearby describing how he got a photo he was showing some others the day before.

“Go to the next car park south and start following the pathway etc”.  So after completing the foggy walk, we went to the next parking area, started our hike, until we reached a sign then started the climb up a hill.

With surrounding air temperatures rising and upon reaching the viewing point, the Grand Prismatic was beginning to reveal itself under still a bed of steam and fog above it.

Some colour beginning to emerge

From the hill Grand Prismatic beckons but the steam persists

Not knowing if it would clear, we ventured off to enjoy many other sights within the park.

Next day, we returned back up that hill to the same viewing point and were rewarded with this.  Quite magical as the gasps from many others expressed similar thoughts!

The Grand Prismatic in all its glory

West Thumb Geyser Basin – very different with various small geysers actually in Yellowstone Lake which fishermen used to catch fish in lake and whilst still on the hook/line, dip them into a thermal pool to cook them.  Located here as well are some beautiful deep blue thermal pools.

Small geyser in Yellowstone Lake and magnificent thermal spring

It was also here where we crossed Continental Divide at ~8,700 ft or ~2,652 mtrs.

Upper Geyser Basin – it is here Old Faithful does its thing by quite regularly blowing its top every 44 to 120 minutes, so we watched it a few times

First time we saw Old Faithful doing its 'thing'

Next morning reliable Old Faithful still letting rip

In Upper Geyser Basin there is also the Grand Geyser, which erupts higher than Old Faithful but may only erupt once a day… we got lucky and saw it go off.

Grand Geyser can erupt ~100 metres skyward

We stayed in the old section of the Old Faithful Inn, built in 1903, an amazing timber building with a real sense of both history and presence.

The foyer of Old Faithful Inn

Despite the crowds everywhere, juggling for car parks or having to make a bit of a trek to see some things, Yellowstone Nat. Park was well worth the visit, quite an exceptional place.

Grand Tetons

Now it was time to head out of Yellowstone through the south entrance and enter another national park, an area called the Grand Tetons.

The Teton range stands out very distinctly

Essentially this is a mountain range of about 65 kms (40 miles) in length, called the Teton Range and is part of the Rocky Mountain chain.  The national park also includes Jackson Hole, which is actually a basin shaped geographic area and not a town.

Thanks to George helping us to understand the Grand Tetons, these are different to other mountain ranges because they suddenly and jaggedly jut straight up between 1,200 to 2,100 metres out of a flat and already elevated plain above sea level.

First view of the Tetons in the distance after leaving Yellowstone

In front of the Tetons there are no foothills, there are simply the flat plains or glacier created lakes and boom, there stand the Tetons very abruptly!  The highest of the peaks is Grand Teton at 4,199 metres above sea level.

The Tetons standing majestically behind a lake

So most of our time in the Tetons was trying to photograph these mountains from a variety of vantage points, or at the right time of the day to get hopefully some nice photos.

By luck, we had spotted a great photo in Yellowstone of the Tetons and it described where it had been taken at a location not too far from the cabin we were staying in at Colter Bay Village.

So yet again, we were up before dawn and found ourselves driving to ‘the’ secret destination.  Hmmm… a lot of other people must have seen the same photo because there would have been 15-20 other cars in total also there before the sun rose.

At least 40 people with cameras were patiently standing outside in near freezing temperature as the sun just started to make its warming presence felt.  These are just a few of the resulting photos.

A few of  the early morning photos from the 'secret spot' as the sun rose

On our way even further south to Jackson, we stopped yet again at exactly the same location for a few more photos like this.

The Tetons are very photogenic and dominate everything

As we got closer to Jackson, the Teton inspired scenery just kept presenting itself, along with beginning to learn more about some of the early settlers in this part of the USA.  

The Mormons were very prominent in the areas closer to Jackson, setting up small villages after gaining access to large tracts of land through early settler allocations in the 1800’s.

Pictures above are from where the Mormons settled in the Tetons

Cunninghams Cabin - built in 1888 and where a couple lived together until 1928... imagine winter(s) in it

All truly good things must come to an end as we entered Jackson to stay in a small motel for the night, Jackson sometimes also incorrectly called Jackson Hole, a prime skiing destination within the USA.

Jackson was yet another nice town with lots of interesting architecture and the most galleries and jewellery stores we had seen in quite awhile, plus a very odd but interesting entrance into Jackson’s central park made out of elk antlers.

Rob admiring a lot of elk

Before some of you think what you’re thinking… male elks shed their antlers every year and grow new and bigger ones, so the locals simply have to find and collect them to create this structure.

The final parts of our time in west USA was a full days drive along a slightly different and more rural route, including coping with a little falling snow, to re-reach Salt Lake City, where this time we spent 2 nights enjoying a very pleasant city and home of the Mormons.

The Mormons are also the founders of Ancestry.com.

Mormons Salt Lake Temple and part of the 10 acre (4 ha) Temple Square 

We also did a 3-hour return drive to visit the Bonneville Salt Lake where a lot of world land speed records have either been attempted or set.

The Bonneville Salt Flats

We probably reached 40kph in our 'mini jeep' on the salt flats 😂

Finally and after a long drive, we returned our hire car near Las Vegas Airport and after a total of 5,730 kms of travelling, then waited for awhile amongst the pokies located in the departure lounge, boarded a flight taking us to the next stage of this trip.

While waiting to be board you can still try to win

During our West USA travels we visited the USA states of Nevada, Utah, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming with a little touch into Arizona.

CLICK HERE for a few more photos of West USA - Yellowstone & Grand Tetons

As always... Go well!