West Trip Day 8 - Leaving Yellowstone

     We awoke rather early on our last day in Yellowstone. Packed up the rest of our belongings, and decided to get a proper breakfast at one of the restaurants on our way out. I of course had the full stack of pancakes, despite the waiter's warning that I would not be able to finish it. He was right of course, and I did not. With our bellies full, we waved goodbye to Canyon Village and started our journey south.
     The particular road we were on, we had not traveled thus far. This road cut through the Hayden Valley, which is another great area for wildlife viewing. Since it was still rather early, ( around 9ish ) the roadways were fairly clear and we pulled over to an empty pull-off, with a view overlooking the valley below. I pulled out the binoculars, and started glassing the rolling hills, scanning for movement. With my naked eye I could see a black dot moving up the hillside to the right. The binoculars revealed a large grizzly foraging along the hill. My heart raced, and I excitedly pointed it out to Heather, who was equally excited. Some people pulled up near us, no doubt as a result of our pointing and gawking. Soon the pull-off was full of people looking at the bear, and watching it disappear momentarily, and appear again on the other side of a hill.

      Most of the people we have met so far in the journey have been wonderful. However, one particular guy rubbed me the wrong way while viewing the bear. He was a tall stern-looking older man with gray hair. "What are you all looking at?", he said. "There is a grizzly down there amongst the hills". "Ahh we played this game with him yesterday", he replied snidely, as if this was the same bear? Then I stated "He was just passing down that hill, but he's gone from sight now". "Well he's still there, he didn't disappear", he stated in a rather condescending tone. "Uhhh thanks, I know he's still there". And I left it at that. Having pursued the conversation, I should have said, "Ohhh thank you for the information, I was sure that the bear exited at the bottom of the hill through a dimensional portal to the planet Ursuin Cygnus-9". I'm not sure why this guy bothered me so much, I am generally a very laid back person. This guy just burned my biscuits though.
     We left the pull-off and continued south, pulling into a couple of smaller pull-outs, until Hayden valley was left in our rear-view mirror. We made it to Fishing Village, and stopped for a little bit of shopping. Before long, we were leaving with a couple of brand new t-shirts and a recharge of our supplies. Then we continued to the south entrance of the park with the immediate goal of checking out Grand Teton National Park.

      Grand Teton is a park situated just outside of YellowStone's south entrance. In fact, as soon as you leave Yellowstone, you enter Grand Teton, and there is no entrance station. However, there was a visitor center, and we stopped in for information about the park. The park ranger was an older woman, with a very kind face and a bright smile. She asked if we were staying in the park, or just driving through. I stated our plan was to drive through and continue on out of the park today. She took a map out and marked the best spots along the main road and one lake loop that we just had to see.

      With map in-hand, we continued driving along the main route south. The Teton's revealed themselves in all their glory as we drove down a hill towards the foot of Jackson Lake. The park is named after the tallest mountain in the Teton range, the Grand Teton ( yes Teton is actually French for "breast" ). Standing at 13,770 feet, it towers above the other mountains in the range. The amazing thing about this mountain range, is the fact that there are no foothills like most ranges. The mountains seemingly jut out from the ground. Jackson Lake sits at the base of the range, completing the picturesque view. After gaping at the view for a bit, we continued down the road, stopping at a few view-points and reading the informational plaques.

      At the south end of the park is the bustling town of Jackson Hole. On most modern maps, the name simply says Jackson, a name change that was the result of some uptight politicians, as we were told. Jackson was a blur to us, as we only stopped for gas and continued west. The goal was to hit the main interstate, I-15 and continue south for as long as we could, hopefully making it to Salt Lake City. We took a number of backcountry roads going west to get to I-15, over rolling hills and forests, and then crossed into Idaho. After a few hours we were finally near the entrance to I-15, when we saw a number of cars pulled along the side of the road, and people staring and pointing down the embankment. We got out to join the gallery, and as I suspected, there was a young bull moose grazing in the wetlands below the road. Moose spend most of their time eating aquatic vegetation, and this was a perfect area for him to be in. This was our first time seeing a moose in the wild, and it was quite the thrill.

     In Idaho Falls, we picked up interstate I-15 and made very good time traveling south. The landscape started to change as we drove further south. Deciduous forest changed to sage-brush prairies and mountains. We passed into Utah and were near Salt Lake City, when we saw a very dark gray sky ahead. Heather pulled out the Droid and we saw red and orange all over the doppler map, which means trouble. The wind picked up intensely and the Xterra was fighting it. Normally I would try to drive through this type of weather, but having spent almost 11 hours on the road at the time, we decided to pull over to a rest stop and ride it out. The storm was magnificent, and it revealed an amazing rainbow as it passed. The landscape is so open, that you could clearly see the beginning and the end of the rainbow. In fact, there was a double rainbow at one point.

      After the storm, it was starting to get late in the day. We continued on through Salt Lake City and planned to pick up Interstate 80, and continue West. On the west side of Salt Lake City, near the airport, we found a hotel and spent the night. The next day we would travel through some serious desert territory and enter into California, we needed a good nights sleep......