Today was a perfect reminder that life is about the journey, not the destination. We packed up our meager belongings and hit the road going through the Tetons to get to Yellowstone. On a whim we stopped off at a fish hatchery right out of town and got to do a little learning, fishing (and fighting if you’re one of my kids).
The trout raised here end up being deposited in different nearby streams and ponds to restock fish.
To be perfectly honest when I found out we could fish I was more interested in casting a line than I was in the hatchery. This is why you don’t eat dessert before dinner.
After running back up to the car to grab our pole, we saw a family who looked like they had just come back from a rainy camp last night. Their truck looked like it had barfed up all their camp equipment onto the pavement, and I could tell they were trying to dry things out a bit. After chatting the dad up, he came up to us afterwards and handed me this lure saying they had good luck with them in the past. Cue good feelings. Small occurrences like this are a tiny reminder that the world is good.
Storm clouds started forming off in the distance, and we knew we’d be hitting the road soon. Back on the road we stopped off at the one and only pizzeria along the way for a Sicilian (margherita) pie, grilled cheese sandwich, and soda. (I love having food to snack on all day long even if it’s cold pizza.)
After stopping repeatedly to look for more animals while munching slices of pizza, we entered the south side of Yellowstone on our way to the hotel/inn just outside of the West Yellowstone entrance.
Our room was almost the same exact layout as the last inn we stayed at, Just with different decor.
Might as well get an early start on this place…we ended up stopping here a few times throughout our stay to get our fill of Old Faithful and its cousins.
This is the inside of the Old Faithful lodge. It’s massive from the outside, but unfortunately we couldn’t go all the way up. The accessible upper floors are lined with chairs to sit on, look down on fellow tourists, and relax.
These safety depictions were oddly amusing.
(not Old Faithful)
There were constant reminders not to disrupt the natural ebb and flow of nature.
Believe it or not, although the two parks are practically adjacent to each other, the change was definitely noticeable. Grand Teton had wide open driving spaces with few trees in the lowlands except near the rivers. There were tree-lined mountains and bike paths adjacent to the roads for what felt like the entire way. I liked that it was made to be bike friendly. We saw lots of conventional bikes as well as electric-assisted bikes exploring the pathways. I learned to spot the river by looking for trees that followed the path of the water. In comparison the Yellowstone roads we traveled on were almost always accompanied by walls of pine trees and their weaker cousins, which we learned had no taproot and could be identified by their lack of lower lateral branches. In the past they were good for making homes and buildings. Yellowstone had way more forest. Even the steep rocky banks of the Lewis river had old-looking trees poking out of its rocky banks. The water color looked almost black from above. Yellowstone ended up being dotted with springs and geysers in certain areas. It sits atop a volcano, which provides the heat in which the steam is produced. You can see them all along the drive to and fro.
The WOO family page 
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