Ephesians 5:10: Grand Teton's and YELLOWSTONE!

We spent the night before Tetons at a Marriott in Idaho Falls Idaho...home of MOST of our potatoes... then we drove the pass up into the Rockies. what a pleasant sight to see the sign for Jackson Hole Wyoming at the top of the pass! Grand Teton's was a "pass thru" for us as we were only 30 miles from Yellowstone and decided to stay up there for two nights...but what a stop it was! The main lodge has a HUGE meadow in front of it with a huge patio that you could watch the wildlife from... there were atleast 3 herds of Elk out there when we showed up and vaious other mammals that could be identified by binoculars... it was awesome! The mountains, as a backdrop for this scene were over the top! We found a good bench and sat for a while.. then traveled a bit north for a picnic on Jackson lake... I'm sorry it's been a while since I posted. We've been up in Alberta since last weekend and Natl Parks don't have WIFI! Here's a sampling of our days in Grand Tetons and Yellowstone! Yellowstone, is... I guess I'll tell as the pictures fly!

This was our picnic spot!

The hot springs inYellowstone Blew us away! They first appeared right next to 45 degree Lake Yellowstone and they were BUBBLING... I didn't really get the concept so, of course, I had to touch it... yup... it was boiling! ouch. (Experiential Learner!) These hot springs were everywhere.... like in the woods, and along the roads and out in a meadow... literally, Yellowstone is a geological timebomb of activity!

This is a snow shoe hare that showed up at our campsite! Krissy took this picture!

Oh! and the buffalo? We started counting them and then gave up because we literally saw hundreds of them...

Sadly... up until Yellowstone, this was the only Moose we saw... but we're still looking!

This is Hayden Valley that we spent some time chatting with a group of people that follow the wolf packs in the park...these people were SERIOUS! Mike ended up spotting two wolves, but thru spotting scopes they were just little dots but this seriously what these people did ALL DAY! God bless em... I needed to move on... but the valley was gorgeous!

Loved this one... not our group but some of the wolf spotters on a hill... with the sun setting behind them... I couldn't resist... it was just too pretty!

The clouds in Yellowstone were really cool... I took this one for Audra...

This wasthe Upper Falls in the Artist Point Region. Awesome power that God has created in water! This was about a mile from the Bear mauling on this day. It took a mans life who found himself between a sow Grizzly and her cub. They decided NOT to destroy the bear as she was simply protecting her cub. It was the first death by mauling in 25 years... they closed Artist Point, but opened it the next day.

This is the lower Falls that you can see from Artist Point (which I learned the next day when I took Krissy there!) The only Artist Point that I ever knew was a restaurant in the Wilderness Lodge in Disney World. The real thing is WAY better... (minus the Grizzly mauling).

This was called Steamboat Hot spring... it was AWESOME! it would just blow like a steamboat but without the whistle!

I was pretty sure this buffalo wasn't real... I was gonna poke it, but Mike didn't think that would be prudent.

Don't worry... I didn't take this picture... just found it in a giftshop and thought it was so cute!

Old Faithful Lodge was our favorite Lodge... we went to all of them!

Watching Old Faithful!

..and then she blew.... it truly was VERY cool. It blows every 90 minutes or so... thus the name "Old Faithful"!

This is Old Faithful Lodge with a hot spring in between.

The PINK girls...

OK. Wolf or Coyote? Krissy and I tracked this bugger for about 15 minutes!

Our sweet Kristin VERY happy to be spending an afternoon on horseback in the back country of Yellowstone! TRuly a very COOL experience! We ran into a herd of elk on the ride and had a hair raising experience on the edge of a canyon but I'll save that story for later!

OK...the answer to my quiz was.... it's a coyote... but Krissy and I were SURE that it was a white wolf, until Michael burst our bubble when we got home so excited to share out 100 pictures with him...grrrrr.... The coyote was still pretty! And we got pretty close!

Remember I said Artist Point was over the top in real life? Here's the view!

On the night before we left we went spotting wildlife and ran into two bull elks... yes, I had a 210mm camera but it was still pretty cool to be so close that I couldn't get the whole rack in my lens!