A Raven thru the Moonroof.

Long day of stuff in Yellowstone. I'll start with our hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, and coffee. On our way out of Mammoth Campground, we saw a bunch of rocks to climb, so we did. Rock city, rock rock city.

Our next stop was the Museum of the National Park Ranger. Quick stop, had some interesting patches, old jackets, general historic stuff. Continued south to the Norris Geyser Basin, which had a bunch of bubbling and smoking pools and geysers. Really smelly stuff, but incredibly cool looking to walk around.

When we got back to the car, to our surprise, a huge raven hopped out of the moonroof. It ran off, but did its best to peck at our food: it tore off a single piece of the paper bag our food was in. Lucky us.

From here we faced a decision about whether to drive further south to more geyser basins, or east to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Mud Volcano. We chose the latter, and the waterfall at the Canyon was enormous and awesome. Some lady yelled at us for crossing a switchback, and she immediately became the butt of all our pretentious jokes for the remainder of the day. We hiked around a bit more off the north rim of the canyon, gave us some "inspiring" views. (Editor's note: A mother later told us here later that seeing this bird in our car made her son's trip.)

We drove further south from Canyon Village to Mud Volcano, a set of pools and geysers that formed only forty or so years ago. More of the same from Norris... Once you've seen one set of pools and geysers, you've kinda seen 'em all. Not that they're not cool, but it's nothing different to write home about.

So, the smell comes from the sulphur. The different colors on the rocks are a result of what it mixes with. Yellow is usually pure sulphur, where greys and blacks are a result of an iron mix. There were also whites and reds, but in my limited park sign reading I couldn't figure out what they were from.

After Mud Volcano, we began our drive down to the Grand Tetons to make sure we got a campsite. The drive took us past Yellowstone Lake, which was a cool site to see with the mountains in the background. The lake was also crystal clear, probably because it all comes from snow melt off.

The Grand Tetons are incredible. Our camp is at Signal Mountain, which overlooks Jackson Lake. It's about 20 steps, give or take, to the lake shore from our camp site. Another great spot.

We checked out a few overlooks this afternoon/evening, but we were too big on hunger and too short on sunlight to do an evening hike. Cooked up a dinner of sausage, pasta, and onions that was delicious. S'mores for dessert over the campfire. Tomorrow we hike around Jenny Lake and the main Teton mountain, before heading to Jackson Hole for the evening.

My phone was dead all day in Yellowstone, so there's no pictures from there. The two are over the mountains in Grand Teton National Park.

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