Reunion Tour - 16

Spent the night in a real nice motel in the Grand Tetons National Park. Got up early, had breakfast in the Lodge, and headed out for an early morning float trip on the beautiful Snake River. We shared the raft with a six member family from Japan and a family from New Orleans. The New Orleans husband grew up in Oak Ridge and the wife in Sevier County, so we called ourselves the Tennessee Group. The weather was perfect as was the float trip. We saw ospreys, eagles, and assorted waterfowls but no large animals like bears and mooses. (Actually we did see the rear end of a deer but I didn't count that.) Back to the Lodge by 11:00 then on through the Yellowstone Park to head for Cody WY. Now for a recap on Yellowstone. We had been to Yellowstone when the kids were little - probably 30 years ago. My memories of the Park were not very accurate, other than the geysers. In addition to being very diverse, it is HUGE. It's over 3,400 square miles in size and has a lake that's 140 square miles in size. That's us having lunch on the shore of Yellowstone Lake - some view! The Park has five entrances and it's a long drive to get to anywhere. They have had numerous forest fires over the years covering very large areas. The National Park Service assumes that this is a natural process so they don't take down dead trees or clean up much. We saw a really neat sign in front of one of these fields of charred poles: "This forest has been reseeded by the wildfires of 1985" (or whatever the year). Behind the sign was a new forest of 12-15 foot trees that had grown up on their own out of the burned area. A natural process.