And at long last, Yellowstone National Park: We were on the road for 4½ weeks before we got to Yellowstone. We had had a great time. We had seen it all and we were tired. We almost turned towards home without seeing Yellowstone. Just like everything else on this trip, it was amazing.

The Grand Tetons at sunrise - from an overlook at Yellowstone Lake.

Yellowstone Lake.

Cassin’s Finch.

Spotted Sandpiper.

Bison.

Grizzly.

Cactus – They are everywhere that there are cowboys.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.

Dennis at the Yellowstone River Falls.

Mike at the Virginia Cascade of the Gibbon River.

Castle Geyser.

Mike at the Double Goggle Geyser.

Dennis at the headwaters of the Firehole River.

And Old Faithful. This was at the beginning of its eruption. We had been walking in the geyser field for about an hour when OF began to blow, and we had seen a lot of bubbling and one other eruption. This was the biggest and the best. No wonder it’s famous.

From here we are turning towards home. We may post some more before we get home, and we may post some more summary posts, like birds or flowers etc. after we are home.

Love to you all. See you soon,

Mike and Dennis

We are now at Yellowstone National Park. We got to Cody, Wyoming last Friday after a two day drive down from Glacier National Park. We are making two posts today: one from our last day in Glacier and the other from our travels to and at Cody.

These are Photos from the travel to Cody:

An American Dipper at Many Pines Campground.

Our Campsite at Many Pines – another fine National Forest campground.

Cloud and rock formations along highway 120 north of Cody.

A Peregrine Falcon and a Great Horned Owl – in Cody

The Buffalo Bill Center of the West. (Look it up on the web.) Although we expected this might be overrated, it is not. It was truly worth the time and effort to visit: Five separate collections in separate wings, it is a very nice collection of art, artifacts, history, and a little mythology.

These are photos from our last day at Glacier National Park:

A moose Calf at St. Mary River.

Tour boat on St. Mary Lake. Note that many of the trees on the hill are dead. Pine Beetles have been attacking many western forests and are changing the face of the Parks.

Doe and Yearling at the side of the road to Two Medicine, in Glacier.

Mike at Running Eagle Falls on the Two Medicine River.

River rocks in the Two Medicine River.

Two Medicine Lake.

An Aphrodite Fritillary Butterfly in a meadow at Two Medicine Lake.

Dennis at Two Medicine.

Unidentified Flower at Two Medicine.

Red-Naped Sapsucker at Two Medicine.

The drive on the Icefields Parkway from Jasper to Lake Louise was amazing. More glaciers, more snow-capped peaks, more thundering waterfalls, more impossibly colored lakes, more alpine wildlife.

Athabasca Glacier

Loon on Bow Lake

Black Bear on the side of the road

Castle Mountain and the Bow River

Lake Louise is a glacier melt lake at the base of towering mountains. The color of the water is turquoise. The lake was named for Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, the fourth daughter of Queen Victoria.

 

The lake is an extremely popular tourist attraction with thousands of tourists visiting it on summer days. We mostly avoided the crowds by visiting the lake early in the morning and in the evening. 

Lake Louise

Moraine Lake

Dennis at Lake Louise

Clarks Nutcracker at Lake Louise

Fortunately, our campground near the village of Lake Louise is in a quiet pine forest alongside the Bow River. On our last day in the Canadian Rockies we went back to the town of Banff where we soaked in the hot springs pool and took a gondola to the top of a mountain overlooking the town.

Banff Gondola atop Sulphur Mountain

 

View of Banff from atop Sulphur Mountain