Quest for the West – Day Three

Dateline August 27, 2009

Today’s Theme: Yellowstone Journey

The Itinerary:

We say goodbye to the Wort Hotel and Jackson and head to the Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks. A bit of history regarding the Grand Teton:

“The original Grand Teton National Park, set aside by an act of Congress in 1929, included only the Teton Ridge and 6 glacial lakes at the base of the mountains. The Jackson Hole National Monument, decreed by FDR through presidential proclamation in 1943, combined the Teton National Forest acerage, other federal properties, inlcuding Jackson Lake, and a generous 35,000 acre donation by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. The Rockefeller lands continued to be privately held until December 16, 1949 when impasse for additon to the national park was resolved. On September 14, 1950, the original 1929 Park and the 1943 National Monument (including Rockefeller’s donation) were united into a “new” Grand Teton National Park, creating present day boundries.”
(quoted from the National Park Service website)

Our first activity is to board the Jenny Lake Ferry and some hiking! Jenny Lake has a visitor center, so hopefully we can get our National Parks Passports “stamped”.

Jenny Lake is 2.2 miles long, 1.2 miles wide and estimate to have depths of 260 feet.

The Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point hike is over natural terrain, steep inclines and we will climb around 400 feet. Our elevation at Inspiration Point is 7,200 feet!

After our hike we have a picnic lunch at String Lake to rest a bit.

Then we are off to Yellowstone National Park.

First stop is the West Thumb Geyser Basin. “West Thumb Geyser Basin is one of the smallest geyser basins in Yellowstone yet its location along the shore of Yellow-stone Lake ranks it as the most scenic. West Thumb derived its name from the thumb-like projection of Yellowstone Lake and the name was given by the 1870 Washburn Expedition. It was also known as Hot Spring Camp. West Thumb has less geyser activity than other basins. But West Thumb, for its size, has it all-hot springs, pools, mud pots, fumaroles and lake shore geysers.”

After that, on to our next hotel, the Old Faithful Snow Lodge at Yellowstone. After checking in and getting settled, we gather for our welcome dinner at the resort!

Enjoy Today’s Photos (remember we are on Mountain time) :

Barb & Bill at breakfast at the Silver Dollar Grill.

The coach adventure begins!

On the bus heading to Grand Teton National Park for a morning nature hike

Grand Teton

Boarding the ferry to cross jenny lake

Group shot at Grand Teton

Mike and Terry on a snack break on the trail to hidden falls

Learning about the glaciers impact on the area which also served as our picnic spot

Amber

We have arrived in Yellowstone! First stop: Check out the thermal attractions at west thumb

Crossed the continental divide and arrived at the Snow Lodge

Yellowstone elk

Cool! Or hot..I mean coolly hot, or hotly cool.

Welcome dinner at snow lodge. Kathy is sitting in the chair that was occupied by President Obama a few days ago.

A few of us rebelled and went for the evening show!

Woohoo! It’s the 8 pm show!

HOW TO FOLLOW OUR ADVENTURE!
Once the Adventure by Disney begins on August 25th, there are THREE ways you can follow us! With new social networking, we plan to do something a little different.

TWITTER
There is a program called “Twitpic” that allows one to send photos via a mobile phone directly to Twitter. Mike Newell, Beci Mahnken, and myself will be posting photos “live” via the Twitter network.

Deb Wills: http://twitter.com/AllEarsDeb
Mike Newell: http://twitter.com/MouseWorldRadio
Beci Mahnken: http://twitter.com/beci_mousefan

FACEBOOK
We also have our twitter accounts transmitting automatically to our Facebook accounts. So those of you who are “friends” can follow our adventures that way!

BLOGS

At the same time, AllEars team members Jack Marshall and Debbie Koma will be back home copying our Twitter photos and combining them this daily blog. So, you can follow us either here, on Twitter or on Facebook.

We have been told that there are areas where we will travel that have limited, if any, cell phone service, but we’ll make it up once we get service back.

I hope this provides some cool ways for you to follow us on the adventure of a lifetime, an Adventure by Disney to Wyoming!