one day, two parks

I think I'd better write today; Denise said she is really tired. I guess the time change caught up with her - even though last night was a good sleep night. Or maybe she's tired because our day today was full of nonstop motion.

Instead of turning into the Grand Tetons National Park entrance just north of Jackson, we kept driving north on the main road. We were in the park anyway, and there was a stop Denise wanted to make on that road.

We didn't try to make an early start today so it was about 8:30 or 9 by the time we got to Schwabacher Landing. I was really surprised that it turned into a really good stop. When we looked at the mountains from the road the light looked flat. Once we followed the dirt road down to the level of the water everything looked very different. Wow! There was still water to reflect the mountains and the trees, and the grass was really green. That was a good stop!

Somehow it took all day for us to drive from Jackson to the Old Faithful area in Yellowstone. It's really not that many miles between the two places. We drove a bit, then we stopped. Sometimes we stayed only for a few minutes, sometimes we went for a longer walk.

I remember seeing some of the places when we were here in 2002. A lot of the places were new to me though; that's so cool! One of the new places was the West Thumb geyser basin. That's right next to the shore of Yellowstone Lake. From one spot I could see the milky blue of a hot springs in front of the crisper blue of the lake.

We saw Old Faithful erupt early in the evening, then we walked around part of the Old Faithful geyser basin. We saw Sawmill Geyser erupting and erupting and erupting. Old Faithful is much taller when it erupts, but Sawmill was more fun to watch. Sometimes the water pumped straight up, sometimes it came in spurts. The spurts made it more interesting to watch.

Tomorrow will be another day of wandering, of seeing new things.

--- Rover