Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks

The Tetons

Jenny Lake

The grand old Old Faithful Inn... in 2010 I got to stay there.

Thermal features of the Upper Geyser Basin.

Old Faithful erupts about every 90 minutes.

Gibbon Falls

Thursday, July 21st.

When I woke up it was 12 degrees! It promised to be much warmer later, but that kind of temperature dictated a lazy morning. I wore socks and a sweater for the first time since the first day. I got talking to a family of three generations who were staying in the rooms beside me. The grandfather was driving a classic small 1950’s pickup truck that said in the back window ‘Built Ford tough, with Chevy stuff!’ The bike didn’t want to start this morning, either because of the cold or it is just plain tired. We both got our stuff together by 9 and rode north for an hour to the Grand Teton National Park. The Tetons are a beautiful mountain range with several lakes at their feet. I rode around the scenic loop and the Jenny Lake loop which ultimately led to the south gate of Yellowstone National Park. I had intended to use it as a scenic byway to the northeast corner of the park where I could ride out over the Beartooth Pass, but the ranger told me it was closed due to the flood damage in the north part of the park this spring. So, I decided to ride to see Old Faithful first. The roads in Yellowstone are the worst I’ve ridden anywhere. There were several places where they were working on the roads and had gravel sections. Sometimes it was reduced to one lane, very frustrating. Of course Old Faithful went off when I was in the parking lot and it wouldn’t go again for 90 minutes, so I walked around the boardwalk surrounding the other thermal features.

This from Wikipedia:

Watching Old Faithful Geyser erupt is a Yellowstone National Park tradition. Old Faithful is one of nearly 500 geysers in Yellowstone and one of six that park rangers currently predict. It is uncommon to be able to predict geyser eruptions with regularity and Old Faithful has lived up to its name, only lengthening the time between eruptions by about 30 minutes in the last 30 years.Thermal features change constantly and it is possible Old Faithful may stop erupting someday. Yellowstone National Park contains more than 10,000 thermal features, including the world's greatest concentration of geysers, hot springs, mudpots, and steamvents. These features are the visible expression of the hydrothermal system and the underlying hot ground and magma storage region deep below the surface.

Then I got back on the bike and decided to ride west around the southern loop and exit the park via the east entrance to Cody, rather than drive back over the construction spots. Yellowstone is massive and it takes a long time to drive around it with the speed limits, construction and traffic. There are beautiful and unique sites but they are a long way apart and inbetween is millions of trees. I saw very little wildlife, just two pronghorn and about a dozen buffalo, mostly one at a time not in a herd. I finally reached the signpost that indicated the east exit was 26 miles away. That seemed to take forever, and then the nearest town, Cody, was another 82 miles away. I was tired and cranky and just wanted to find a room, but had to do the ride first. Yellowstone is up on a high plateau which is why it is cooler, and the road to Cody followed a beautiful river valley down for a very long time. I didn’t arrive in Cody until 8pm. My GPS quit this afternoon which made finding a hotel a little more difficult, but eventually I settled into a little motel for the night. It took a long time today to ride 464 kms. Tiring and frustrating day.