Yellowstone Park!

The Jones fam has returned from our Yellowstone adventure! It was such a fun getaway. The weather was was great and ended up being mostly overcast, which I preferred since it made it much more bearable to hike around trails and sight-see in a cool breeze rather than blistering hot sun. Be prepared for lots of pics in this post folks, thanks to my new iPhone!

Our first day started off with the Grizzly Bear and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone near our hotel. Even though the animals obviously weren't in the wild, I was still giddy to see bears up close (the two brother bears were having a water fight in their pool...adorable!) and wolves (they are HUGE!). They also had a few birds of prey that have been rescued and now live in captivity.

After the Discovery Center, we headed into the park where some animals greeted us along the way. We were amazed by all the different kinds of wildlife we were able to see.

We headed through the park to Mammoth Hot Springs. I admit, I was a little disappointed because the springs are not as watery as they should be. Because of their dryness, it seriously looked like we were on the moon instead of hot pot territory. It was a dry, gray and copper mud pile instead of white mounds with rivers flowing over them. Eh. I took a few pics of the section that looked the most watery to me. Still a neat site to see.

Day two started out geyser sight-seeing. What a cool day! It started out with smaller hot pots here and there off the sides of the roads and then...the BIG pots! I've never been to the two biggest pots in the park before, so seeing these for the first time was just awesome. Seriously, the size of them is spectacular.

Excelsior Geyser - Second largest in the park. Maybe football field size??

Grand Prismatic Spring - Largest in the United States, third largest in the world. Top pic is aerial view from online; bottom is from ground level that I took. See the size of this thing?!

As my favorite warning sign clearly shows, stepping on a geyser blows your hat off and makes your mother mad. So don't do it.

Next up was our stop to Old Faithful (which we got to see go off 3 times because we dinked around so long at the Old Faithful Inn and gift shops!). It was pretty cool. I wasn't quite sure what to expect and had pictured a huge blast of water into the air like the Bellagio fountains, so I think I was a little bummed when that wasn't the case. Instead, Old Faithful gradually built up to its grandeur, and the anticipation for it to go off was making me antsy. But, very neat experience the the infamous geyser. 

Another great experience we had was going up on the roof of Old Faithful Inn for a tour. Apparently, they only allow these to family members and special guests but somehow my dad must have pulled some special strings and/or complained and was able to get us an exclusive tour with just us...mom chickened out because she's afraid of heights. The 360 degree view of the park was awesome! We could see so far and spot puffs of white smoke all over from hot pots around the park.

Cloudy skies...storm's blowing in!

Our last full day at the park consisted of seeing Yellowstone Falls and Yellowstone Lake. The falls were gorgeous! We went to a few different lookout points, each with a different view of the massive waterfall. Fave pics to follow because let's face it, it's pretty hard to have a bad pic when a waterfall is involved. And how gorgeous is that canyon? And a rainbow with the tree and water? Are you kidding me! Oooh, I love nature.

And that was pretty much the Jones & Lieber Yellowstone adventure 2012. The park was so beautiful. There was always something to see. We saw many different animals, some quite rare, and got to see the majority of the park. Yellowstone is a treasure! And yes, I bought many smashed pennies as my souvenir. And to wrap up my post, here's a couple more pics...

Comments about Jenny looking like the plump stuffed buffalo are not permitted.

Ferdinando the buffalo...or so we dubbed him. Like the story!

* THE END * 

I would like to thank my new love Instagram for making these photos possible, which allow me to post them easily to my blog instead of downloading them from my camera (because that takes yeeeears) and also for making me appear as a professional photographer.