Ken Nelson

Start: Cody, WY
End: Jackson, WY

Eager to get an early start, we decided to skip breakfast and just grab snacks when we gassed up.  So we loaded up and westward we climbed out of Jackson, through Wapiti and into the mountains leading to Yellowstone National Park.  Near Wapiti we saw this odd house:

Which seems to be a normal house with a bunch of mining stuff jammed on top of it. Very odd, but no signs. If you know what it is, let us know.

We climbed steadily and very quickly got to Yellowstone National Park. Lovely as ever, and still with snow in the higher parts:

Paula was driving so i could handle photo duties – an opportunity I took advantage of.  After a bit of driving and numerous scenes like above we reached a high point and could see Yellowstone Lake in the distance:

 
Yellowstone Lake from the west – distance about 15 miles

 
It is a large lake prone to sudden high winds that generate waves that can capsize boats, canoes and kayaks quickly. But today it was calm (until later).

Driving through Yellowstone you are spoiled with endless “oh ah” scenery:

We stopped, as we usually do at the Continental Divide for a picture. Fortunately a relatively camera savvy traveler was there as well and we exchanged photo duties for each others families:

Alas, we’d had to wake Jenny up for this stop:

She had car sickness much of the trip and spent many days sleeping from non-drowsy Dramamine. We woke her up for the really good stuff – like… Old Faithful – a hot geyser.

 

The risk @ Old Faithful is that you would arrive right after it erupted. But we were in luck… the Ranger said “10 minutes or so” so we didn’t have to wait long before it did its thing:

 
The entire area was packed with a few thousand people. Then we all disappeared back to a huge new parking lot. But not before hitting the gift store and the ice cream shop… Oh… and taking a picture of the kids while it was erupting:

Note that I usually convert their pictures to b/w because they almost invariable pick hideous clashing colors for their outfits.

We then drove south, out of the park (seeing lots more cool scenery) and headed into Grand Teton National Park. Ho hum… just more awesome scenery:

 

We then stopped at a place I think I could earn a decent living as a portrait photographer:

This time the guy I handed the camera too really knew what he was doing. The light on the mountains was fading due to an incoming storm, but the results came out pretty good.  Do I look like I’d been driving an RV for 42 days and had pretty much given up on morning shaves????

Then down to Jackson, WY to stay at the Virginian RV Park.  Getting there was one of the few times “Garmin Buddy” – as we called our Garmin Nuuvi GPS let us down. It took us to the east side of Jackson on to smaller and smaller roads. We got worried when it turned to dirt, and REALLY worried when we passed an “Entering National Forest” sign… fortunately there was a nice big turn around at a trail head and we headed back to the Virginian, this time using a paper map.

We, of course, ate at the Gun Barrel. They have two locations, one in St. George, one in Jackson. They have nearly identical menus, but quite different spaces (architecturally). Both are decorated with extensive taxidermy. We ate a lot….

Then we walked back, read a bit and went to bed.  We had a long day the next day…