What a difference 50 miles makes. Only an hour’s drive from the gently rolling hills of Yellowstone lay the soaring snow-capped peaks of the Tetons. Where Yellowstone provided intrigue, Grand Teton provides awe. While Yellowstone, despite its vastness, was always crowded, Grand Teton, despite its small footprint, feels far larger, more open, and much more solitary than its neighbor to the north. To top it all off, everywhere you turn, there is an incredible picture waiting to be taken. In short, the amazed reaction I got from people when telling them I was on my way to Yellowstone would have been better reserved for when I told them I was off for Grand Teton.
I was thinking of naming this post “Double Double Toil and Trouble,” or some truncation of that, but it sounds kinda silly and so do any pieces of it I might use. But that really would be an appropriate summary of the day, minus the toil and trouble part. This whole place is basically a giant bubbling cauldron of strange unearthly materials that, when put together in just the way that Yellowstone has them, produces a potion unlike anything else in the world.
At 3:00pm I had given up on Yellowstone. I had written it off as just another Grand Canyon experience, and had begun counting the hours until I could move down to Grand Teton.
It had been a day filled with nothing but frustration. The day had an ominous start as I hopped back on I-90 for 30 miles on the way into Yellowstone. Of those 30, 29.5 were under construction. When I say construction, I mean that half the road was closed and there was nary a construction vehicle nor a sign of any construction project in progress. And no, we do not have construction like that in the northeast. We have road work, but you will never see a 30 mile stretch of continuous interstate brought down to 1 lane.
After fighting my way into the park, my first stop was Mammoth Hot Springs. All I knew about it was that it was some sort of geothermal feature, which meant it should be cool to look at. Well, it kinda was, once I got past the veritable city surrounding it, complete with a post office, 2 gas stations, a police station, and a courthouse. The one thing that wasn’t marked on the signs was the actual location of the hot springs. Eventually, though, I found them.
