Those Are Some Huge Tetons!!

After our detour back into the southwest to enjoy the warmer weather we headed back towards the north and the awaiting snow.  Our first stop was Grand Teton National Park.  The high country was still snowed in so we camped along Jenny Lake and went for several day hikes in the area.  On our first hike we almost walked into a rather large moose, needless to say we quickly reversed to a safe distance and watched him eat everything in sight (it was a long winter).  Another hour down the trail and we saw and even larger moose 50 feet off the trail. The next day during a hike Alexis got to see her first grizzly bear sign, large claw marks on a tree; we decided to purchase some bear spray (or as I call it "human spice sauce").  After three nights in the park we moved north into Yellowstone.



Our plan was to spend a week or so canoeing around Yellowstone Lake.  Driving in, we passed Lewis Lake (pictured below left, and yes that is all ice) and things didn't look so good for our canoe plan.  We checked in at the backcountry office near Yellowstone Lake and found out that the lake was ice free but snow covered most of the camps and the area was pretty cold.  We decided to change plans again and not canoe around the lake as camping on snow didn't seem like a great time.  We started a driving tour of Yellowstone in the Old Faithful area.  We spent hours walking around the geysers and springs and saw some buffalo and several geysers erupting.  The weather turned wet so we checked out the historic lodge and enjoyed a drink and some good people watching before making a dash to our campsite.



The following day we continued our tour of all things hot water related seeing numerous geysers, hot pools, and mud pots.  We also saw a bunch of buffalo (the novelty quickly wore off as they blocked traffic and caused people to generally drive like they were drunk talking on their cell phone) and elk.  After a full day we headed back to camp to make dutch oven pizza; because of the cool weather Alexis had spent most of the day with the pizza dough warming in her lap.  Of course it started dumping rain that evening so we set up a huge tarp and enjoyed some fresh baked pizza.



We then move our camp up to north Yellowstone where I did some fishing in the flooded creeks (not even a bite as the creeks were 5x the normal flow), and hiked to Grizzly lake where I saw only black bear sign.  On the way there we stopped to see the upper and lower falls on Yellowstone river.  The falls were quite impressive because of the afore mentioned runoff.  We spent five days in Yellowstone and decided to try our luck further north in Glacier. 

 

 With a name like Glacier the area must surely be snow free right?  Well, the lakes of Glacier are about 2500 feet lower than Yellowstone lake so we now plan on doing a canoe trip there with a possible backpacking trip if we can find a snow free area.  On our way out of Yellowstone I called my old friend Alan who just happened to be traveling to Bozeman where we were headed.  We met up at a new microbrewery for a beer and then headed for the hills for a bit of camping.  We had a great time catching up and enjoying our campfire (photo above right).  We are now in Helena getting ready for Glacier.