Day Eight and Nine - Yellowstone and Grand Teton

We decided to not rush out real early to see anything today. It was going to be cold and we thought we’d mostly be in the car. So we all bundled up with our 4 layers of whatever we could find and headed out!

As we drove towards the Grand Canyon area we stopped at Gibbons Falls and took some pictures, one of the kids and one of the adults. Our children are becoming quite the photographers. Every once in a while you’ll see them whip out their iPod Touch and snap a picture.

In the Grand Canyon area, there were a couple great places to get pictures of the falls. We stopped to see the Upper Falls where there was a pretty tough trail to hike to see the Lower Falls. Most of the group went down Uncle Tom’s trail, but I opted to take the kids who didn’t want to go back to the RV. Those that went got some great pictures!

We then headed to Artist’s Point to see the Lower Falls, the most photographed site in Yellowstone (according to Jason). It was quite spectacular. I’m sure when you look at the picture you will recognize it!

The rest of the day was spent driving through the park, so much to see and just not enough time to stop at all the cool pull offs. The kids were getting a bit antsy in the RV, but we took the long way back to the campground anyway. In our drive we were stopped twice by herds of bison. I think we lost a total of 30 minutes waiting for them to clear the way. And as you can imagine, you wait for them, they could care less about your plans.

Saturday was our last day to see Yellowstone and make a quick trip to Grand Teton. We headed out early since we had a long travel day ahead of us. The drive to Gran Teton was beautiful (as was everything we saw, really). You can see the Teton mountain range as you head south out of Yellowstone. We were up high enough that there was still a ton of snow on the ground.

We did a really quick stop in Grand Teton. Stopped by Jackson Lake for some pictures and then to the Visitor Center to get out National Park stamp in the kids passports. I was looking forward to seeing Jenny Lake, so our family went there for a quick picture and look around. It was a beautiful area. I didn’t want to leave!

Once we got our pictures we headed towards Nebraska for our next stop Chimney Rock! Since Sarah did a report on the Oregon Trail we thought it would be fun to see it. It’s pretty much in the middle of no where. We came, we saw and we left the next morning.