Yellowstone Wednesday (Part 4)

Yep, yesterday was Yellowstone Wednesday. This was our third trip. We cheated just a little bit though. Got off to an early (for us) start at 9:15. We had to stop in West Yellowstone for fuel (just a few gallons, I'll tell you about that later) and were at the park gates before 10:00. Not bad for us. Our mission for the day was to find some moose. One of my "chatter friends", Dee gave me a phone number for a friend of hers who works at Yellowstone named Linda. I called her and she said she really couldn't give us any more info as we have pretty much done everything she would have told us to do. The only other thing was our quest for moose. She said she hasn't seen any moose in Yellowstone for two years. Apparently they have all moved down to Grand Teton National Park. So, that's where we were headed. To get there from where we are you go in the west gate of Yellowstone, drive down through the Geyser Basin to the south entrance and then enter Grand Teton there. There was a ranger at the gate but he was just waving everybody through. I don't know why that was. We stopped at the visitor center because there was nobody to give us a map at the gate. There was a restaurant right next to it so we had a bite to eat. The ranger at the visitor center showed us where to go to see moose and it was the same places that Linda had told us earlier. We drove on down the road and found out we weren't even in the park yet. There's an area of about 10 or 15 miles between the parks that is kinda a "no man's land".


I'm telling you there is no shortage of park guests in these places we've been visiting. People must be vacationing in the U.S. this year instead of travelling abroad. There's a list of campgrounds as you enter either park and almost all of them are listed as FULL. I believe it because everywhere we've been has been pretty crowded. Linda told us the more people there are in the park the less you see animals. They don't like people so they stay up in the hills away from people till they go home. Years ago people used to see a lot more animals because they were allowed to feed them (even bears!) so the animals associated cars with food. Now that you're not allowed to feed any animals (even squirrels) they stay away.

We saw so few animals in Grand Teton. Less than the south loop in Yellowstone. We still had a really nice day as the temps were pretty perfect at 80 and the scenery was absolutely amazing. I'd say "stunning" but people who know me know that I don't talk like that. LOL

Our first glimpse of the Tetons


Another view

And another


These are for you Jenny



We went down to the little town of Jackson, Wyoming to get fuel. We got fuel earlier in the morning but just got about $50 worth because Rod checked online and it was a lot cheaper in Jackson. It wasn't that much cheaper though. I think you probably had to get out of the city to get the cheaper prices. I didn't know Jackson was such a HUGE tourist area. Good grief, it was a Wednesday and this place was PACKED with people. It would have been nice to stop and walk around the town but we weren't about to look for parking. We just needed fuel. Found that and headed back to the park.

Downtown Jackson

The entrance to this city park has an arch made entirely of antlers!


One on each end

We found a place back at Grand Teton to sit and have our sandwiches for dinner and wait for the moose to show up. It was dusk, we were at a place we were told moose show up everyday and we had time to kill. We sat there for an hour waiting for something to show up but nothing ever did. We could hear elk off in the distance but they didn't come either. Jeez, I don't know what we have to do to see animals here. Go to a zoo??

We headed back home after that and still no animals even at night. Got back late again just like the last time we went to Yellowstone. These are making for very long days but they sure are fun. I think our next visit will be back at the Lamar Valley to look for wolves again.