North to Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park is due north of Jackson and Grand Teton National Park, just a little ways up the Rockefeller Parkway.  We left our campground and drove back through Grand Teton National Park for one last view before heading to Yellowstone.

We pulled over at an overlook with a view of the Teton range to make sandwiches for lunch.  I went out to take a few pictures since the sky was as clear as it has been since we got here.  As I was taking pictures, a bald eagle flew up from the trees below and into the sky, right in front of the mountains.  In my excitement to catch it on film for Jeff, I forgot to take the camera off the manual setting from when I was trying to experiment, so none of the pictures came out.  I tried to wave at Jeff or the kids in the motorhome so they could come out and see the eagle, but they were making sandwiches.  Even though I don't have a photo of it, seeing the eagle fly by at that time was the perfect way to end my time in the park.

It took about three hours to get from our campground in Jackson to the Grizzly RV Park in West Yellowstone, Montana.  There were a few steep hills and descents on the drive which kept Jeff on his toes.  It's a beautiful drive through woods, along rivers and high up above canyons.

Having pushed ourselves a bit too hard in Grand Teton with early mornings, we decided to take it easy today.  The drive along the southwest area of the lower loop and out to West Yellowstone was the only part of the park we saw.  We set up camp at the Grizzly RV Park, which is a nice, spacious campground close to town and the West Entrance of Yellowstone.

After getting everything hooked up, Jeff pulled out his computers to do some work, and Ruth rested in the back of the motorhome.    After I ran to the grocery store to restock some of our supplies, Henry and I drove over to the Wolf and Grizzly Center, a few blocks from our campground.  The Center is a not-for-profit organization that rescues grizzly bears and wolves that can no longer be in the wild and keeps them in their sanctuary.  The grizzlies we saw were either orphaned as cubs or had to be taken out of the wild because they kept getting into garbage cans or vehicles in populated areas, looking for food.  

Henry loved seeing the animals up close.  Two bears starting playing together, wrestling and charging at one another.  The wolves, which were in a separate enclosure, were very active and curious to look at the people on the other side of the glass in the indoor observation area.  We looked at exhibits and watched a short movie about the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone.

We cooked dinner at our campsite.  Since it was raining, we made steak sandwiches inside the motorhome.  We wrote out some postcards, tried to get this blog up to date, and either read books or watched television.  Throughout the night, there were intermittent thunderstorms but nothing too bad.  We all had a restful night.