Not my weblog

I don’t have any more notes from the trip.
I know we stayed in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.
I know we stayed at a park in Pennsylvania, I think it was called Laurel Lake. After that we drove to Kate’s parents house, and the trip was over. We got to spend Kate’s birthday with her parents and her younger brothers.
The trip was 8 weeks, 11 National Parks, 12,000 miles, over 2,000 photos, (not even counting Kate’s) only about 5 motels, over 20 campgrounds, a dollar amount I will not mention, hundreds of gallons of gas, but over 35MPG, plus lots of other stuff, unlimited fun, and great memories.
I can’t wait to do it all again.

We drove.

We drove to the Badlands and spent a couple hours enjoying that National Park. The Badlands are nice, but there really isn’t much to do there, since they don’t have many trails. And after seeing Grand Teton and Yosemite, the Badlands just left a lot to be desired. It’s a park that got the short end of the stick by being at the end of our trip.
We had dinner at Taco Bell, because sometimes that food just really hits the spot.
We camped at Palisades State Park. The site was abysmal, it was just a tiny spot at the bottom of the road embankment. We had the option of setting the tent up on a large rock, or on a slant. But they did have nice showers there, which was something, because it had been a while for either of us at that point.

In the morning as we packed up the car we talked with the people camping next to us. The guy had a voice just like Mike Rowe. It was eery. We left Grand Teton in the morning and began the final push East. It was starting to rain a bit, and it was the first time we had seen rain in possibly six weeks.
The gas was cheap in Wyoming, a lot cheaper than anywhere else.
We camped that night in Bear Butte State Park, the park with the name that Kate couldn’t stop saying.
The ranger there was named Fred and he was very friendly. I almost felt bad that we were just going to sleep there and be on our way.

I wanted one more good hike before we drove back East. I got up very early and Kate reluctantly followed. She drove me to the trailhead at Jenny Lake, and I headed off. My goal was to hike to Lake Solitude. It was 8.5miles each way, for a total of 17 miles. The guidebooks suggest that the hike takes over 10 hours, so I wanted to get an early start. The trail goes past Inspiration Point which has a great view of Jenny Lake, and then up to Hidden Falls. I saw a two deer, a male and female moose, something like a groundhog, and I think I saw a Pika, but it moved very fast. I saw what I’m sure was bear poop, but no bears.
Lake Solitude was beautiful. There was still a lot of snow. I took the guidebook’s recommendation and walked to the far side of the lake. There were people coming and going the whole time, but they all stayed on the side of the lake closest to the trail. So I enjoyed my solitude on the far side of the lake, and stayed there for an hour, just relaxing and enjoying the clean air, the clear skies, and the serene calm of the glacial lake.
The hike down took about the same time as the hike up, all told it took me 7 and a half hours. It was a great hike.

We got up very early in the morning. We were all packed up and out of the campground by 6:30am. We stopped to see the Painter’s Pot hot springs. There were some very loud geothermal features there.
We headed South to Grand Teton. The Jenny Lake campground was full, so we decided to stay at Signal Mountain. The view of the Teton range is breathtaking. I wish I could paint of a mural of it on my bedroom wall. After lunch we went for a swim in Jackson Lake. Being a glacial formed like it was cold. After our swim we drove to the Colter Bay Visitor Center. They had a very nice super market with real groceries that we wanted to buy, and good prices too. It was a welcome change from Yellowstone. We had some ice cream too.
In the evening we walked over to a small cliff over Jackson Lake and watched the sun set over the Teton Mountain range. It was the most spectacular sight of the entire trip. The lake reflected the light gorgeously, and the mountains are just awesome. The sky was clear, and the sun created beautiful shades of orange, pink, red, and yellow. I took a video of it. It’s a large download, but I enjoy watching it.

So we drove into Lamar Valley. We saw herds of Bison, plus many lone Bison. The adult males don’t spend all their time with the herd. We drove through the Grand Loop stopping along the way at anything that seemed interesting. We went to see Old Faithful. It wasn’t as tall as I thought it was going to be. We also saw the Mud Volcanoes. I think the photo gallery better describes the day than I can.

We spent the morning taking a hike through the Beaver Pond Meadows. And after that we went to the Lost Lake. It was a nice relaxing walk and it took up most of our day.
The ranger program that night was about Bison, which is Kate’s new favorite animal. We had a close call with a Bison in the morning when we stopped to take a picture of one not far from the road, and he momentarily turned towards the car as he contemplated charging it.
The ranger was very engaging and gave an excellent talk. We learned a lot, and enjoyed ourselves greatly. We originally planned on leaving the park the next day, but at the talk we learned that we could go see a herd of Bison if we went to Lamar Valley, so we opted to stay another day in the park.

We were headed for Yellowstone. Shortly after entering the park we saw a Wolf run across the road. As we were soon to find out, Yellowstone is the premiere park for wildlife viewing. We opted to camp in Norris campground. After setting up camp we drove to Mammoth Springs and saw Elk eating the grass directly in front of the visitor center. The shops in Yellowstone were a vast disappointment, they had no good food, which was annoying, because we were didn’t have a lot of good stuff. We assumed that Yellowstone would have shops comparable to Yosemite, but they didn’t even come close. We went for a walk through some of the geothermal features. Neither of us were prepared for the smell.
That night after dinner we went to the ranger program at our campground, it was about Grizzly bears.

We got up early to take advantage of the continental breakfast at the motel. We helped ourselves to coffee, orange juice, bagels, cereal, fruit, and apple sauce. We headed over to a laundromat nearby to wash our clothes. We saw on the TV about IndyMac Bank being taken over by the FDIC. After our laundry was done we hopped back in the car and continued East. We drove across Idaho on I84. We stopped at the Potato Museum in Blackfoot, ID. We camped just outside Yellowstone National Park. The campground was called Henry’s Lake, and it was a total RV park, not suitable at all for tents. It was on a very nice lake, but that meant it was mosquitos like you can’t even imagine. It was gross.