Puskas FamilyAlaska Vacation: geysers

Thursday, July 28, 2011

7/28/1991 - Sunday

John: we took our time this morning and ate our breakfast outside. I also caught up in our journal. It’s kind of a bummer, as today we started our seventh week (which is our last week). We headed out at 10:00 AM and stopped at a few more geysers on the way out of Yellowstone. We drove south to Teton Nat’l Park and we saw an antelope... the Grand Teton Mountains are very majestic. Before we left Yellowstone, we stopped at a visitor’s center in Grant Village and saw an excellent exhibit on bears. We are camped just outside of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, at a campground called “Gros Venture” within Teton Nat’l Park. As I write, our camp neighbor came over and told us there were two huge bull moose grazing where I got firewood just a couple of hours ago... soooo, I grabbed my camera and we all headed into the woods cautiously towards the spot where they were. Then we saw one of them! He was big, with a large velvet rack. He was lying down in an old stream bead... so you couldn’t see him until you got right on top of him. I got a little closer and got some more pictures of him... I didn’t know where the second moose was, so I took my last picture of the moose before he got up and before the second moose showed up... pretty exciting!! (Sure hope the pictures come out) There a lot of moose scat all around here... even in our camp spot. Maybe we’ll see more moose right in our camp spot in the morning! We drove 132 miles today.

ODOM: 31435

Geysers

More Yellowstone fire devastation

The Grand Tetons

Susan, Kari & John at the campground

Huge bull moose

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

7/27/1991 - Saturday

John: We headed out about 8AM and got into Yellowstone in about 5 to 10 minutes. We snarfed on a camp spot ASAP. We then drove 114 miles within the park. We did “the longer loop”. We decided not to go to the Northern Loop as there isn’t that much up there. We saw all the Yellowstone features... such as Yellowstone River and a lot of the spectacular waterfalls, the many hot geysers, mud pots, Yellowstone Lake, and saw Old Faithful blow up twice. We stopped at a visitors center and listened to a park ranger give a talk about Yellowstone’s wildlife. We then viewed a video about the 1988 Yellowstone Fire. You can’t believe how many acres or should I say miles & miles of burnt forest there is. What a waste. It’s really sickening. In our travels, we ran into several bison jams, saw elk, deer, bald eagles, pelicans, and a marmot.

ODOM: 31303

Summary: After six weeks, we’ve spent a total of $3590 cash, plus 550.78 on gas credit cards for a grand total spent of $4141. Total miles driven = 7441