On Wednesday we headed out to Yellowstone National Park. We went up to the west entrance from our place in Victor. Along the way we stopped at Mesa Falls, which is a beautiful set of waterfalls a little south and west of Yellowstone. There are a couple of walkways that lead you down to a safe viewing area to see the waterfalls. Along this trip we saw a lot of waterfalls, which seems to be characteristic of this part of the country with the large rises and falls in elevation. Yellowstone itself has many waterfalls, of which we stopped to see three. The most beautiful of the stops that we made was Painters Point, which gives a great view of the lower falls of the Yellowstone River. It made for some beautiful photographs.

Read the rest of this entry »

On Tuesday we headed out to Grand Teton National Park. We are staying in Victor, ID, which is about 45 minutes from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is at the south tip of the GTNP. In between Jackson and Victor are a bunch of mountains, so we had to go over one of the more difficult mountain passes that I’ve seen – it’s about a 10% grade the whole way up and the car has to work pretty hard to get up. Jackson is very much a tourist town – especially with it’s themed building code – all of the buildings are made to look like an old west town. Supposedly many hollywood types like to vacation in Jackson – though I’m not sure why it’s a pretty ordinary town. From what I’ve read most native Wyoming residents think of Jackson as a joke and definitely not the real Wyoming. We stopped in at Jackson for a short time to see the few sights that we wanted to see and buy a couple souvenirs, then we headed out to GTNP.

Read the rest of this entry »