There was no microwave in the room of this hotel, so Yunluo and Yan Chenyu asked the girl at the front desk to help them heat up their instant lunch boxes. The girl was very kind and took Yunluo and Yan Chenyu to the kitchen to use the microwave. After a tiring day, the family finally had hot rice to eat. Compared to the McDonald's meal at noon, they felt extremely happy.
In the evening, Yunluo was surfing the Internet and drinking beer in the lobby. While smoking outside the door, she chatted with the girl at the front desk. She was curious about the Buddhist beads on Yunluo's hand, so they talked about Tibetan Buddhism. She said that she had read a lot of books about it in college and respected it very much. Yunluo showed her photos of herself in Dharamsala.
I was fortunate enough to meet him in person at the Dharma Assembly. The girl at the front desk was quite shocked at the time. She said that she had always dreamed of going to India and the Kashmir region, and was now working to earn money for this dream. Thumbs up.
Grand Teton National Park is named after the Teton Mountains, which belong to the Rocky Mountains. Because the mountains are on the west side, the sunrise in the morning is the most beautiful, but the sunrise point is a bit far away. If you want to watch the sunrise, Mushroom mm has to get up early and drive, which will be too tiring, so she decisively gave up. I slept until I woke up naturally, feeling refreshed, but it was still cloudy outside.
But after Yunluo and Yan Chenyu finished a hearty buffet breakfast, they looked out the window and saw that the clouds had cleared and the sun was warm. Under the blue sky, the mountains behind Teton Village were full of yellow or red trees, full of autumn. The road to Grand Teton National Park is closed. There is a famous antler park in the town. The four corners of the square green space are arches made of antlers. The whole body is gray and white. Tour groups usually come here to visit. To land here, you need to leave the main road and walk a gravel road to reach the river valley, overlooking the Teton Mountains and their reflections on the surface of the Snake River.
The rows of birch forests along the river bank dyed the world under the blue sky golden. You can imagine how beautiful it would be to watch the sunrise here. However, there is no snow on the top of the Ain Mountains. I heard from Mushroom MM that there were still snowy mountains in May, but after a summer, the snow has melted away.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to see snow-capped mountains, you have to come in spring. If you want to see the colorful autumn colors, you have to come this season.
When Yunluo and Yan Chenyu arrived, they found a van full of Chinese photographers discussing composition and so on. They were all equipped with awesome cameras. Yunluo and Yan Chenyu had the advantage of having a beautiful mushroom ion, a very small wooden structure church. At first glance, it looked very ordinary, but the transparent glass window on the west wall of the church was the finishing touch. Comparing the two pictures below, you can deeply understand the meaning of the four words "picturesque"!
The photo was not adjusted for vividness or saturation. I just increased the sharpness and dark details. The colors I saw were so fairy-tale-like! It was not easy to take this photo. I waited patiently for a group of elderly European tourists to visit the church before I found an opportunity to take the photo when there was no one around.
Then we headed towards Jenny Lake, walked around the lake, and took a simple hike around the lake. The sun was already setting, and the Teton Mountains were backlit. The color of the lake ranged from dark green to azure blue, but it was a pity that there was no commanding height to take a bird's-eye view of the lake, like the fish-watching pavilion at Kanas Lake, which would be particularly beautiful.
As evening approached, Yunluo and Yan Chenyu gradually began to head towards Yellowstone Park, leaving the main road twice to head for the previously marked viewpoints. The first time was along a very bad gravel road into the river valley, with no special scenery, and it felt like a scam, mainly because the road was too bad and the speed limit was no more than 20 km/h.
When the sun was setting, Yunluo and Yan Chenyu drove past Jackson Dam and watched the sun set over the hills at the end of the lake. It was still a long way from the hotel when they arrived at the entrance of the South Gate of Yellowstone Park. Yunluo and Yan Chenyu had some udon noodles and Shin Ramen noodles at night, accompanied by dried tea brought from home and sausages bought from the supermarket. Yunluo only needed two cans of beer after the meal to be satisfied. Although the room was not big, it was comfortable enough. The only thing that was not good was that there was no wifi.
To be exact, there is no free WiFi in any accommodation in the entire Yellowstone Park. Even if I use Mushroom MM’s mobile data to open a hotspot, I cannot send photos to my Moments. I am quite depressed. I can only continue to go to bed early and get up early. Tomorrow I will start a three-day visual feast of Yellowstone National Park!
I wonder if other budget travelers have had this feeling: before going to a new place, no matter how clearly the online guide describes it, no matter how detailed the recommendations and introductions from friends are, you actually still have no idea what it is like. But after you have been there, and then look back at other people's similar experiences, you will feel the same way.
Just like after going to New York this time, when I look back at "Friends" or other movies that take place in New York, I immediately feel different! A more vivid analogy is that people keep telling you how sexy it is to French kiss a beautiful girl, but no matter how accurately others describe it, you can't form a concept.
In fact, you have to pout your lips and try it yourself to know! Yunluo was also walking around Yellowstone, recalling the strategies his friends had told him. In fact, it was still a brand new and unknown exploration for myself.
Tips for visiting Yellowstone: The roads in Yellowstone Park are mainly in the shape of a figure 8. There are also small paths leading to some special viewing points. Except for those hot springs and waterfalls, other viewing points are distributed on the roadside, especially in places with relatively large parking lots. If you see a lot of cars parked on the roadside, it means that tourists have discovered something and stopped to watch.
Maybe it was a bear, or a deer, but if it was a wild yak, forget it (this is very practical), this animal can be seen everywhere in Yellowstone Park. There is really no need to stop for it. The first time I saw a wild yak on the grass 20 meters away, I was like some other tourists who entered Yellowstone Park for the first time.
Yunluo was very excited and stopped the car to look around for a long time. Only Mushroom, who had been to Yellowstone, was very calm. He told Yunluo and Yan Chenyu that wild yaks were the least valuable animals in Yellowstone. They were everywhere, in groups. The next few days proved what she said. There were even more yaks than tourists.
Go northeast along the lower right half of the figure 8. First, go along the north shore of Yellowstone Lake, and then along the Yellowstone River. The scenery along the way is amazing. You can often see steaming geothermal resources, lush coniferous forests, and large areas of dead branches and trunks.
At the upper river falls and lower river falls, the Yellowstone River begins to have two consecutive large drops, forming very spectacular waterfalls, especially the lower trail, which goes all the way down to the canyon near the lower end of the waterfall. <&, Mushroom drove along the highway with his family on this section of the road, while Yunluo walked along the trail. It took about 20 minutes.
It is equivalent to walking on the top of the south wall of the Yellowstone Canyon and walking eastward all the way. The pale yellow canyon rock wall on the north side is also sandwiched with rust red and brown. Yellowstone Park got its name from this. The bottom of the Yellowstone Canyon, several hundred meters deep, is the Yellowstone River. From there, you can see the Lower River Falls to the west.
The Yellowstone Canyon on both sides and the Yellowstone River flowing through it are excellent viewing platforms. It is also more beautiful in the morning when the light is favorable. Yunluo and Yan Chenyu arrived a little late, and the canyon was bright on one side and dark on the other.
From here, there is a trail that continues eastward along the south rim of the Yellowstone Canyon. Few tourists enter. There are two roads in the jungle. Yunluo chose the less traveled one. The round trip was about 5 kilometers. The scenery he saw was actually similar, with forests, canyons, rivers, and cliffs that made people tremble with fear.
However, on the way back, they ran into a deer in the woods. It was an unexpected surprise. The deer was eating leisurely just 5 meters away from Yunluo. If Yunluo got a little closer, the deer would timidly jump away and keep a distance. This was the only time they ran into a deer during the three-day trip to Yellowstone Park.
I didn't eat lunch, so I was a little bit hypoglycemic. I could only fill my hungry stomach with sesame cakes. I drove to the north edge of the Yellowstone Canyon. There is an observation deck overlooking the waterfall just above the lower river trail. It is also worth visiting, although it takes more than 10 minutes to walk downhill from the parking lot to the waterfall platform. <'s viewing point is probably similar to the other one, so Yunluo and Yan Chenyu didn't go because they were in a hurry.
We started our return journey at around 4 p.m., passing through the Yellowstone River on the way back. We went to see the West Thumb Hot Springs before we arrived. There are also dozens of hot springs of different types and colors in the hot spring basin.
There is no mistake in the poem, post, content, and read the book on 6, 9, and bar!
It is right next to Yellowstone Lake, but unfortunately the sun is setting and we can’t see the bright color of the hot springs, so we plan to come back for a spin tomorrow morning.
There are two restaurants in Grant Village, one only accepts reservations, and the other has a huge queue. Yunluo and Yan Chenyu waited for half an hour and finally gave up. They went back to the room to eat Shin Ramen. When they smoked outside at night, they saw the brilliant starry sky and the Milky Way. Although the air here is fresh, the altitude is not high enough after all, and there is still a gap between the starry sky in Ali on the Yunluo Plateau.
I got up a little earlier in the morning and set off at around 9 o'clock. The first stop was the West Thumb Hot Spring Basin where I visited yesterday evening. As expected, the colorful side of the hot springs began to show when the sun was shining. Later, when I started to visit the Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, I was truly shocked. West Thumb is actually just a small thing, as this place has the advantage of being close to the background of Yellowstone Lake.
Originally, it was very close to drive along the lower left half of the figure 8 to Old Faithful Geyser and Grand Prismatic Hot Spring, but tragedy struck, the road was closed! So Yunluo and Yan Chenyu had to take a detour, first along the road they took to the waterfall yesterday to the middle of the figure 8, then cross the middle road to the west side of the figure 8, and continue south to the Old Faithful and Grand Prismatic area.
Before arriving at the Grand Prismatic, we first went to a hot spring area, which is about 5 kilometers north of the Grand Prismatic. It is a large white mineral plain, dotted with different hot springs in reddish brown, black jade and dark blue colors (the names on the LE map are Leather Pool and Silex Spring, which can be searched for positioning).
There are also geysers (clepsydra geysers) that continue to erupt hot water and steam. I began to appreciate the magical beauty of Yellowstone's geothermal resources. Even the dead tree trunks in the hot spring basin are a kind of withered beauty.