Second part of our road trip was dedicated to exploring Grand Teton National Park which is located directly south of Yellowstone. We left out most of Wednesday (excluding the small drive to reach it in the morning) and an early part of Thursday for this task.

We started the day off by eating a breakfast at Grand Village and driving south to our next lodge — Flagg Ranch Resort, picking up 2 last Yellowstone stamps on our way. Check-in was quick, but we were quite shocked when we got to our cabin. It was completely infested with mosquitoes. About 40 of them at least. We tried killing them off, but they would just not end, and they kept biting us in the process. Alena especially.

I was really angered by this, so I called the front desk. I was informed of the fact that they can not spray mosquitoes because they are located inside the national park and that I can have my money back. Luckily after that they connected me with a manager, who switched out our cabin. Quite honestly we expected to see the same thing, but the other room was good. I guess somebody left the door open in the other one, hence the problem. Either way I would think twice before staying there again.

However for all the time that we wasted there we were handily rewarded. We got into the car and drove off in the direction of Jackson Lake. Right when we got onto the main road I noticed that there was a traffic behind us. I don’t remember any construction being there, when we passed that piece of road an hour ago, I thought to myself, and then it clicked. “Turn around!” Eldar made a U-turn and we started looking.

People were cautious. Everyone was taking pictures, but nobody was getting out of the car. And they had a good reason not to! There was a grizzly bear right by the side of the road! We couldn’t believe our bear luck. We took another a million photos yet again, and made several video clips. He was not 2 meters away from us. This encounter made it all worth it. And if it wouldn’t be for the problems at the lodge we would’ve left long time before that and would’ve missed everything.

After that we made a bunch of stops at all visitor center collecting the stamps, and took some photos of the mountains from the outlooks alongside the road. Our next point of interest was Jenny Lake, where we were planning to take a 2 mile hike around the lake and another half a mile to Hidden Falls. There is a ferry running for those who want to avoid this 2 mile hike, but we enjoyed it a lot. We did take the ferry back.

Now for all the falls we’ve seen inside Yellowstone this one impressed us much more. It wasn’t the fact that it was bigger or wider, but we were standing right at the bottom of the follows starring right at them. The others we saw from quite a big distance and it was OK, but this was certainly impressive. A big river crashing down from the top of the mountain right at your foot. Well worth the trip. The only annoying thing were swarms of blood thirsty mosquitoes all over the place.

At this point we drove back up, ate a nice dinner at Flagg Ranch restaurant and turned in for the night, for tomorrow we had a long drive ahead of us, back to Colorado.

Thursday morning we made another pass through some outlooks to take shots of the mountains while they were lighted by morning sun from the east. We also stopped by Jackson Lake Lodge and I imagine it would be a hell of a place to stay at. The views from there were magnificent as well.

Soon after we left the great parks of Wyoming and set out on our way. We took a slightly different route back and the views where great for the most part of the drive. On the way there we were driving mostly through huge plains and here we were surrounded by ever changing mountains. I don’t remember anything more about the drive back, but the fact that we placed through a “town” called Muddy Gap. Must be a nice place to live at.

Даня уже написал о нашей поездке по верхнему кольцу, поэтому я просто оставлю пометки о наиболее запомнившемся, не соблюдая хронологический порядок.

Мне ну очень нравились поля с луговыми цветами! Еще мне понравилось то, что во второй день мы увидели очень много бизонов и мелких бизонят.

Я была впечатлена “встречей” с медведем! Думаю, мои впечатления были бы совсем иного рода, если бы он повстречался нам одним просто в лесу… Всё-таки хоть многие медведи и привыкли к людям и практически не обращают на них внимания, они не перестают от этого быть дикими и непредсказуемыми зверьми.

И к бизонам у меня тоже абсолютно не было желания подходить близко; некоторые смельчаки, однако, мой страх не разделяли. По-моему, просто глупо так рисковать здоровьем и жизнью.

Водопад в каньоне мне тоже понравился — в первую очередь, пожалуй, желтоватым цветом скал. Для меня это зрелище было чем-то новеньким.

Еще мне понравились Mammoth Hot Springs. Не знаю какие правильнее использовать слова для описания — у меня в памяти остались мраморно-белые вперемежку с кирпично-оранжеватыми ступени со струящейся по ним водой от которой подымается пар.

For our last full day in Yellowstone we had several objectives — see Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, Mammoth Hot Springs, Tower Falls and as many animals as possible. We also wanted to collect the remaining stamps.

Our first stop was Canyon Visitor Center. We discovered that we passed the canyon itself a while back, but since we would have to take the same route home we decided to proceed to Tower Falls. The road there passed through some of the highest mountains we had to go through in the park and all the hills were covered in a thick layer of flowers of different kinds and colors.

The falls themselves were nice, but it was hard to impress us at this point after we’ve seen all the stuff that Yellowstone is really famous for. The part of the canyon here was pretty deep, but again, it got nothing on the actual Grand Canyon.

Next point on the map was Lamar Valley. We were told that it would be the best place to spot animals and it was also a location of hard to find stamp. Of course we wanted to see bears more than anything. Yellowstone, after all, is home to black and grizzly bears. Second on our list was a moose, then wolfs and coyotes and we have seen several bison by now.

What we didn’t expect was to see huge fields filled with bison. Big and small, young and old. Huge herds roam the lands of Yellowstone. We also managed to spot several more pronghorn antelopes, and we saw a bull elk with huge horns hiding in the forest behind the trees. But alas, no bears.

Our next destination was Mammoth Hot Springs. On our way there we encountered massive traffic. This usually is a sign of construction or an animal sighting. Seeing people running around and looking into the mountains I decided that I need to join the “search” party.

I saw one guy pointing into the distance, but I couldn’t see anything. I started using my 200mm lens that I had on the camera as a telescope and what do I see? Two round brown ears sticking out from behind an old thump. Could it be?

And right after that our fuzzy brown friend decided to come out. I started yelling for Alena and Eldar to drop everything and come see. It was a real wild bear roaming in the forest and paying absolutely no attention to all the people and their cars. We took several million shots and got back into the car. Our level of excitement was over the top. We were simply ecstatic.

At Mammoth Hot Springs Visitor Center we showed the pictures to a ranger and she told us that it was a black bear and taught us to tell the difference. Grizzlies have a noticeable hump on their back, smaller ears and are more uniform in color.

Then we drove up to the upper trail of Mammoth Hot Springs and took a short hike. Surprisingly (we thought we saw everything) we did end up liking the formation. Sadly our pictures didn’t capture the beauty of it.

And that was it for the main objectives. We arrived too late to Norris to get our last 2 stamps, but we had plenty already, so it was not important.

On our way back we stopped by Roaring Mountain — apparently an extremely hot mountain which nothing can grow on and it produces a hissing sound from all the vents that are located on it.

We did stop by a canyon on our way back and saw 2 pretty big waterfalls, but we were tired for any hiking and the sun light was coming right from behind the falls, which pretty much guarantees bad shots.

We also saw a lot of beautiful landscapes and again got stuck on our way back because of another huge herd of bison chilling on the side of the road. Naturally massive traffic formed.

The day was over. We managed to get to our hotel 10 minutes before the restaurant closure, ate our dinner and took off to beds. This was our last night at Shoshone Lodge and the next day we set out to Grand Teton National Park.

Today we’ve done something that we’ve been planning to do for some number of years now — we visited Bronx Zoo. For Alena it was a first time, while I was there once before, more than 10 years ago, and remembered nothing. We also invited Ignat, Vika and their daughter Alisa to go with us.

With current New York weather being more in line with that of London-Seattle, today was no different. Most of the time we were in the zoo it was raining. Luckily for us it wasn’t raining hard, so we got to see almost everything we wanted to see.

We saw a lot of animals, but tigers, lions, giraffes, gorillas and polar bear were my favorites. We also saw some crazy lemurs which seem like they wouldn’t be able to make a sound, but at one point they created such a ruckus that I thought I’ll go deaf.

We didn’t have enough time to catch a ride on a monorail and as a result we didn’t get to see elephants and rhinos. This is the only thing that I would’ve liked to add to our listed today, but alas — next time.