For a choice few locations, primarily Chicago, Grand Teton, and Yellowstone, we decided to splurge. Mind you, I really mean more of a mini-splurge than what we could have done -- you can pay more than $500/night in some of these park lodges!
Our splurge is for a "cabin" with a wide showcase window directly facing the Grand Tetons. It is beautiful. I had to put cabin in quotes, because it really is much nicer than a basic cabin -- quite nice.
Anyway, enough about the hotel for now. We drove from Cody about an hour to the entrance to Yellowstone. You have to drive through part of Yellowstone to get to Grand Teton from Cody.
The drive from Cody was breathtakingly beautiful -- incredible rocky mountains where the rocks seem to hang just above and about you, pristine streams and rivers, snow capped mountain peaks.
Once inside Yellowstone, it became a bit less pleasant for a while. First, there was the line-up of cars waiting to get in. After we waited through that, we were met just inside the park by a construction project on the access road -- the kind of project where you shut off your engine and just wait and wait.
I tried to be a happy camper, but ultimately became a grouch -- especially once we decided to open our cooler and have a snack while we waited. Our jar of roasted red pepper spread had opened up and had spread all right, all over everything in the cooler. Great, just great!
My sour mood started to drag the others down, but soon enough we got it together and were on our way.
We didn't do a huge amount of sightseeing in Yellowstone, but did stop to take the following pictures of thermal pools in a geyser basin:
We also noted a tremendous amount of the trees in Yellowstone had been lost to the forest fires of a few years ago:
Once in Grand Teton, we headed for the lodge and were treated to some magnificent views. Again, the pictures don't really do justice.
After checking in to our lodge and having a bit of a rest, we went out in search of some wildlife. We had seen a moose off in the distance from our lodge window, and were hoping for a closer spotting. We had no luck with the moose, but did see several buffalo and then saw a mother bear with her three cubs as we passed in the car. They were close, and we were going slowly, so we got a really good look -- no pictures though, sorry.
Our final destination of the day was the town of Jackson, to stroll their shopping streets and have a nice dinner at a restaurant that is more our style than what we've been having -- Thai! Upon leaving the restaurant, we had one of those travel moments that just seem so unreal -- we heard someone calling "A" by name, here in Jackson, Wyoming! It was one of her teachers from SRV, Dawn, who was here on an educational program. What are the chances, yet these things happen so much more often than you would expect. It was great to see her -- what fun!
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