Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National Parks

This is the third page of pictures from our July 2006 tour of Mt. Rushmore, Yellowstone, and Grand Teton National Parks. If you somehow missed the preceding pages, click here: Page 1.

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Needless to say we found the fact that a buffalo was sitting just outside the door very unusual, so we just had to have our picture taken with him.

I think that this guy enjoys getting his picture taken; and as you can see from the picture on the left, he enjoys getting his picture taken from all angles.

The Lake Yellowstone Hotel was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1991. It looks good from the outside, but it's not much inside. The hotel also has a very poor reputation for service in its restaurant. Our room was clean, but pretty worn down. It's an example of what happens when there's no competition. The National Park services contracts out the management of the two major hotels in Yellowstone to the same company, and there really isn't much choice if you want to stay in the park. We were only there for one night, so it really wasn’t a big deal anyway. Our next hotel, The Old Faithful Inn, was much better. More about that later.

Below is a picture of our room, which looks better than it does in person, and the view of Lake Yellowstone from our window.

Above left, the lower falls of the Yellowstone River; and above right, the upper falls. The lower falls are 308 feet high, and the upper falls are 109 feet high. I had no concept of how big the falls were until I was looking at the upper falls picture to the left, and noticed people in it, standing on a lookout just above the right side of the falls.

Below left, there's been much controversy over letting naturally caused fires burn in Yellowstone. This is a picture of a burn area that is now beginning to naturally recover without replanting. The trees look very healthy.

While we were waiting for our room to be ready, I made another visit to Old Faithful, and Roberta went on a guided tour of the hotel. She really enjoyed it and recommends putting it on your list if you're planning a visit.

I took the video to the left in the lobby as the Seattle Men's Chorus and the Seattle Women's Chorus were singing. I have to admit that we both got a little misty-eyed.

I couldn't get a good picture of Old Faithful at the 1:00p.m. eruption because the cloud cover was too heavy and I was shooting the white of the billowing geyser against white clouds. At the 4:20 eruption, I was lucky that there was a mostly blue sky with lots of light.

What I didn't realize before we arrived, is that Old Faithful is surrounded by many geysers and geothermal features. Below is a view from a different perspective of Old Faithful's eruption at 8:50 p.m., and a view of the Upper Geyser Basin at about the same time.