Day 14 - Tower Fall, Yellowstone National Park, WY to Colter Bay, Grand Teton National Park, WY

Today was a short day (under 100 miles). But what it lacked in length, it made up for in beauty. Here was today's abbreviated route:


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And on to the pics. First we have Yellowstone. Yellowstone is huge and contains a remarkable amount of diversity of terrain and ecosystems. It has everything from basically desert to alpine to grasslands to forests.

Saw this next to the above waterfall. I'd say the footing must have been extremely loose.



And yet more hot springs and geysers...


While walking through this geyser area, I came around a bend to find this. I didn't expect to be this close.

Yellowstone Lake is quite beautiful, like everything else in the park...

A lodgepole pine forest near the lake.

This is my fifth crossing of the Continental Divide, which is the imaginary line that runs north-south through the mountains where all the water that falls on the east side of the line ends up in the Atlantic Ocean and all the water that falls on the west side ends up in the Pacific Ocean.

And then I made it to Grand Teton National Park. Unlike Yellowstone, Grand Teton is kind of a one trick pony. You have this impossible range of mountains jutting out of low valley, but for their one trick, they do it extraordinarily well.




This guy has the right idea.

But, just like Yellowstone, the beauty of Grand Teton isn't just its grand vistas. The details impress too.

During my short hike--and that's all I could afford today since laundry absolutely had to be done--some afternoon mountain thunderstorms started popping up. A few sprinkles and clouds like this

quickly turned into this (note the shaft of rain on the left side of the photo).

Luckily I wasn't caught in any downpours.

After laundry and a buffalo burger, I came to the Jackson Lake Lodge for their free wifi to update the blog. Due to the volume of pictures today (and yesterday, since that post was done here too), I am sadly missing the ranger talk tonight on the big weasels of Grand Teton. Maybe I can still make the moose lecture later.

Tomorrow, I head south into Utah and Flaming Gorge.