Saturday scenes and scenery: Grand Teton and Yellowstone Parks

View of Teton range over Colter Lake

Probably very few readers of this blog notice the small graphic in the right hand column that appears under "Cross Country Progress." The picture changes sporadically. I'm now in the third year of virtually "running across the country" via the TransAmerica Bicycle Trail. A health research outfit makes available a website on which I track my real world running miles and can see in maps and pictures how I'm doing.

It's a big country, over 4000 miles across by this route. I am just now, as you'll see at the right, entering Montana from a start on the Atlantic Ocean in Virginia.

I've just passed, virtually, though Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. Oddly enough, though I've driven across the country many times, this is the only segment of this route that I've ever taken in reality. So today I'm posting some pictures from those wonderful parks, all taken in 2000.


Yes, Yellowstone really does have geysers, about 500 of them. This one is called "Castle." I'll spare you a photo of Old Faithful doing its regular thing.


The land is dotted with these steaming pits -- and proper warning signs to keep the adventurous from boiling themselves. I was not tempted.


I did decide this one might be a troll-hole.


Then there is the wildlife. Yes, it is wild. Every year one tourist annoys one of these monsters and gets trampled. It was early spring; this beast was molting.


So were these moth eaten but placid mule deer.


We hiked a small peak, Mt. Washburn, where the snow was not quite melted.


Mammoth Hot Springs is a maze of steaming terraces, here under looming skies.


The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River revealed its colors.

It's trite to say, but preservation of National Parks may indeed have been this country's most creative idea.