Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks

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What follows is a glimpse into our now completed visit to some of the mountsin West premiere National Parks. I'll have more to share later.

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Yellowstone We are in West Yellowstone now. Our first two days in Grand Teton National Park were quite good. We saw quite the variety of scenery and wildlife including half a dozen moose and two black bears. The reflecting lake is Taggart Lake. The photo with Mom and Dad and the snow-clad mountain were taken in Cascade Canyon were we saw most of the animals. The brilliant blue pool is in the Upper Geyser Basin in Yellowstone. We also have seen herds of bison in Yellowstone.

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Our time in Yellowstone is coming to an end. It could hardly have been more varied. On our second day we saw the temperature drop down into the 30s and thee sky spit little ice pellets, called graupel, at us. It sounds worse than it was as much of our hiking was done in forest which sheltered us from the biting wind. Thee first picture is of the Yellowstone River as it rages from one cataract to a calm portion as seen from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone Trail. While we only could walk a half mile of this trail it was a great half mile as we also saw a couple of marmots. We later explored the North Rim Trail visiting the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone. That waterfall drops some 309 feet and you can get a glimpse of in the 7th and especially 8th photos which were actually takaen from a lookout at Artists Point. The rocks might not look quite that viid but they're not far from it showing off their various colors of pink, yellow, brown, and red. The photo of me gives you a bit of a sense of the weather yesterday. The final picture of Mom and Dad was taken at the Monument Geyser Basin which you reach by doing a 1.2 mile hike up to a mountaintop some 650 feet above the trailhead. That geyser basin isn't anywhere as active as many in the park but it was hissing and emitting steam while we were there this morning. I should note that the weather today was about as different from yesterday as you could want: the high temperature was about 62F and it was mostly sunny all day. We did 3 very nice hikes today to round our time here at Yellowstone.