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Jackson and Yellowstone

We're headed out of our hotel in Bozeman this morning, headed back to Seattle -- long day on the road, so we don't have much time for detailed blogging, but here's some of the photos from yesterday.

I've mentioned before how terrible people can be when you ask them to take photos for you of you+amazing sites. Here is a stellar example:

Ok, so here's Lorin and I outside on the back deck of the Jackson Lake Lodge. Pretty ridiculous view... Jackson Lake, The Grand Teton etc etc etc.

We ask this nice gentleman to snap a photo for us. I set up the camera with all the right settings and put next year's holiday card photo in this strangers hand. What do we end up with? 1. that LOVELY bear-proof trash can. Really adds to the overall ambiance of the place. 2. He has composed this photo such that Lorin and I, and in particular my head, are RIGHT in front of THE GRAND F-ING TETON.

Out comes the tripod.

Yellowstone: Grand Prismatic Spring

Jackson Lake Lodge Video

Grand Tetons + Jackson cont.

We left Rob's family in Denver and had a fantastic lunch with aunt and uncle Jim and Sally Belcher in Cheyenne and strolled around Frontier Days, the 3rd largest Rodeo purse in the world. After that we headed north to Casper.

After my wonderful aunt and uncle Lindy and Lance hosted us in Casper, WY at their new 'ranchero' that they designed (Santa Fe style), and we had a delicious meal (thanks Rex!!) with them + Karen and Rex (my mother's other sister) and my cousin Lily and her husband Shaun (thanks again Rex!! It was wonderful), we spent Sunday trying to track down tire / alignment place that had 4 225-45 17 tires in stock. Apparently these are "low profile" tires and no one carries them in stock.... and no one is open on a Sunday.

Finally we found some -- Wal-Mart of course.

Got 'em mounted, but no luck on an alignment, which is too bad, since one corner is way out of align.

Headed out of Casper and made it to Lander, which we really enjoyed --- reminded us of Durango.

This morning we headed out of Lander early towards the Great Tetons. Enjoyed a great day in the park at Jenny Lake and then finished the afternoon strolling the streets of Jackson and an evening cocktail overlooking the town square.

On with the photos:

Lorin at Frontier Days in Cheyenne:

Shoshone, WY:

Mt. Moran in Grand Teton National Park:

View of the Grand from Signal Mountain:

Heaven:

Grand Tetons and Jackson, WY

Lander, WY

After some tire trouble outside Douglas, WY and then struggling to find replacements for this euro-rig in Casper, not to mention on a Sunday (ok, I now love wal-mart), we finally headed out at 4:30pm and made it to Lander just in time to get the last motel room in town, enjoy a gorgeous sunset and a Lander Brewing 'On Belay IPA'.

Layover in Casper: Need new tires- Take Two

Layover in Casper: Let's buy some new tires!

Luckily we were able to limp to the Sears automotive center after blowing a tire on I-25... I guess after 5 years, 40,000 miles, driving 3,000 miles in 100+ degree heat- it was too much to ask.

Catching Up on the Blog - Sonoma to Yosemite

Ok folks, so we're way behind on blogging for real. The iPhone updates to the blog have been very key (ever since we hit Las Vegas and began to have somewhat consistent service). But just a photo here and there with now back story is like have a triscuit with nothing on it -- dry, brittle and a little scratchy on the inside of your mouth.

So now that we have had some time in Denver to catch up on sleep (doing 2 national parks per day for 2 weeks straight is EXHAUSTING!), Lorin and my mom are off to Cherry Creek to do some shopping, dad is at work and the dog is sleeping -- I finally have some quiet time to update the blogosphere.

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We left Healdsberg, CA a little begrudgingly, as there were tons of great looking coffee shops, restaurants, wine bars, and fancy dog stores for all of us to investigate -- we've decided that this is definitely a place we could come back to for a longer trip.

It was in Healdsberg where we finally purchased an atlas and the National Parks of the West book. We had planned on using our iPhones for navigating, researching etc -- what a bad idea THAT was. Laughable man, laughable.

Off we went south on 101 with Yosemite as our final destination for the day. We had several possible routes, but we finally decided that as part of this trip we just had to pay the 6 bucks and drive over the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a PERFECT San Francisco day with low clouds.... the bridge was very picturesque with one of the towers lost in the clouds.

We hadn't really planned on spending any time in SF -- we've both been there several times -- but it really is just such a cool city, that we again adjusted our schedule and decided to poke around town for some photo ops and slow cruising.

This really nice girl scout took our photo here.... We have one where everyone is looking at the camera and it's perfect -- except that the bridge is cut off. This will not be the last time I get frustrated by people taking our photo and not having any idea about image composition, lighting, etc... but I digress.

Are we starting to look alike?

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Garmina, our trusty Garmin Nuvi GPS decided to route us out of San Francisco towards Yosemite by way of ...... downtown. Awesome. We sat in downtown SF for about 90 minutes before finally getting on the Bay Bridge towards Oakland. Fast forward a whole bunch more traffic (although, it really is/was/will be the only traffic of the entire trip), and we saw this pretty view just east of Oakland (shot from the car at 65mph):

We roll in to Groveland, CA that evening and set up camp for a two night stay about 20 minutes outside of the park. The park reservation-only campgrounds were all full and the walk-in campgrounds don't allow dogs (ie. Camp 4). It actually worked out great anyway... our site was kind of expensive (we got a site with electricity hoping we could blog and watch hulu etc, but once again (and not for the last time) we were frustrated by the lack of bandwidth of so called "wifi" at the campground.... hence the huge back log of blogging.

Lorin did a fantastic job of planning our Yosemite itinerary. We were there on a Friday / Saturday, and had been plenty warned about the intense congestion, traffic and all around Griswold-ness of the park. Both days we got up very early and basically had the park to ourselves for the entire morning. It was amazing.... very peaceful, tranquil and beautiful. By about 11am, however, all the gumbies had arisen, had their breakfasts of red bull, bacon and Miller Lite and made a mess of the Merced River and the Valley in general.

Lorin had picked out a hike for us... the "4 mile trail". We hit the trail by 7:30am, with no one in sight. Dogs are allowed on paved trails only in National Parks, and this trail was close enough to being paved (it had been paved years and years ago, and was sort of half-paved now) that we figured we could argue it if a ranger questioned us. It was an awesome trail, straight up about 2,000 feet, and actually is mis-named... it's 4.6 miles ---- one way.

Here's some photos from the hike:

Yosemite Falls

El Cap and I think either the Cathedral or the Sentinal or something... Pretty ridiculous:

The falls kept getting awesomer and awesomer the higher up we went.

Bridal Veil Falls.... very cool, but again, we went towards the end of the day and there were a bunch of crying babies, shuffling fat people etc etc. I am getting really good at comprising my photos by carefully cropping out all the tourists.

Ok. This is pretty much the most incredible view I have ever seen. The whole valley all the way up to Tanaya Valley. I would love to come back and do some backcountry hiking in the Tanaya Valley.

We continued driving up and around the valley to Glacier Point and Washburn Point for the epic view of Half Dome:

And on the way back down to leave the park for the day, we came across this astounding view point that put Half Dome and El Cap almost perfectly in line. This was a little pull out that didn't seem to get much action, compared to the "Tunnel Viewpoint" that we stopped at on the way up. This was actually one of my favorite views of the day (although they were all spectacular).

It was a pretty incredible day... very long day with a 9 mile, 4k ft hike in the middle, but getting up early was so refreshing and peaceful.

Oh, and we cooled off at lunch in the Merced River where we saw an intense tourist scene of hundreds of people on tubes, swimming, drinking bridge jumping etc... it was crazy. We much preferred our early morning hike.