Yellowstone Trip {5/18: Tetons, West Thumb, Mud Volcano, Artist Point, Artist Paint Pots}

We have been planning a Yellowstone trip with Gregg's parents for years that has just never worked out for various reasons. Finally, at last, this year we made it happen! We left early Thursday, 18 May 2023, and met up with Paul and Kim in Jackson Hole at lunchtime. We enjoyed our picnic at the Elk Refuge and then continued on through the Tetons with a couple stops to enjoy the view. It was super hazy/smoky from the fires in Canada, but it's still a magnificent sight! At our stop at Oxbow Bend, we enjoyed watching an osprey fishing in the river. We even saw it catch a big fish . . . and then drop it into the river again! (What an adventure for that fish, eh?!) We also drove into Grant Village, which I don't think I've ever been to before, and got our first glimpse of the frozen Yellowstone Lake.

Cal is into making debris huts, so she crafted
a few at the picnic spot after lunch . . . and they're
pretty camouflaged! Can you spot the one in this
pic?

Here she is with another.

Cal noticed that Kim and I were
matchy matchy but opposite
(or checkerboard, as Sam called
it) so we of course had to have
a pic.

Smoky skies, but still lovely.

Paul snapped this great pic with his DSLR of that osprey
who caught (then lost) the fish!

Oxbow girls.

Frozen Yellowstone Lake at Grant Village.

Our next stop was West Thumb. I always love this spot since the pools are stunning. It was different with a smoky sky and a frozen lake, but, again, still so cool!

We were on the hunt for animals and stopped at a bear jam shortly before (or maybe after?) Mud Volcano, but we couldn't see the grizzly napping on the shore of the river far away and behind some trees, so we continued onward. Mud Volcano was a fun stop, and we walked the entire boardwalk loop, then kept going up the hill to the back pools and lakes and cauldrons that I don't think I've even been to either. It's a stinky stop, for sure, but marvelous to behold.

We drove through Hayden Valley looking for more animals, but didn't spot a single one, so we continued on to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone to Artist Point. The parking lot was practically empty, so we plopped out our blanket and chairs and ate our picnic dinner right there. The views were gorgeous from Artist's Point.

Our last stop before we headed to West Yellowstone to our hotel for the night: Artist Paint Pots. We were the only ones on the trail as the sun was getting low. It was a marvelous little loop with some fun boiling mud to watch pop and bubble.

Sam liked the redness of this rock, but since
he couldn't take it home, we opted for a picture.

We could watch these boiling mud pots
for a long, long time.

Day one in the books! Time for sleep at the Dude and Roundup Motel in West. (Paul and Kim continued on to Old Faithful, where they had reservations in the Lodge cabins (which, spoiler alert, turned out to not be the best sleeping or showering situation for them with one double bed and a broken boiler, so they ended up canceling after the first night and finding a place down the road from us in West Yellowstone for the second night.)