Jun 28 (Sun) Yellowstone, Upper Geyser Basin

We checkout of the hotel and would be transferring to The Grand Tetons National Park.  We won’t be able to check into our house until late in the day so we headed back to the Upper Geyser Basin area, home of Old Faithful. 

We saw Old Faithful blow again and we also took a walk around the basin to see some of the other thermal features of the area. 

Particularly interesting are the colorful bacterial mats…large areas of colorful bacterial colonies.  There were signs to not disturb the mats…apparently if you disturb the mats (e.g. scratch initials in them with a stick they may never recover).  However, in a couple of places it looked like there were bison or deer prints in the mats. 

Of course we saw more geysers.

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We crossed over the river...

to get to another area of bubbling pots of steaming water

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Watch video in new large window.

 and some lovely pools.

The algae growing in the pools made for some great natural art.

We headed for Jackson and the second half of our journey, the Grand Tetons.  Mary had rented a house for the week outside of Jackson (about a 20 minute drive) so we ate lunch at an Italian restaurant there at Teton Village.  Pastas and Pizzas all around.

The house was a hit with everyone.  The main living and dining area was quite large with two sofas (one used most of the time by Mom for her snoozing while watching TV), a big TV, a fireplace that we didn’t use (way too hot) and a hot tub on the patio (also didn’t get used).  There were three bedrooms and three bathrooms on the top level.  Josh was particularly happy about this as he had a room to himself and didn’t have Liam digging into his ribs every night with his feet.  There was a bunk room downstairs with four beds and an adjoining bedroom plus one and a half baths nearby.  And best of all, a small room with a foosball table that got used a lot.  Laundry was started almost immediately. 

Since we still had no food in the house we eventually all headed into Jackson for dinner at Café Genevieve.  The Café is in one of the oldest log buildings in Jacksons.  After dinner we headed down the block to the main park where streets were blocked off for the nightly shoot-out.  There was a mob of people watching the shoot-out so we scooted around and headed into Moo’s Creamery for some excellent ice cream made on the premises.  The timing was good because as soon as the shoot-out was over the mob moved into the ice cream parlor. 

After getting everyone back to the house Mary and Josh headed to the grocery store and filled up on breakfast and picnic items.