Yellowstone & the Grand Tetons |
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In our quest for something a little different, we scheduled Tauck Tours’ “Yellowstone & the Grand Tetons” bus tour for early June, 2008. Tauck has the reputation for delivering a terrific, although pricey, experience. We found this to be exactly correct. Every day of the ten-day tour had something special and just a little different from what you might expect. Delicious meals became the expectation, rather than an exception.
We started our trip with two days in Salt Lake City. First we went to the site of the 2002 Winter Olympics. On a snowy day, we went to the top of the luge and bobsled runs to see what the competitors saw. No one volunteered to go down the fast way. Since our local guide was a retired world-class luger, we got a unique perspective as to what make these guys tick. We also stood the top of the 120-meter ski jump hill. Believe me, it looks a lot higher from the top!
The rest of the day we intended to spend looking around the city. However, we only got as far as the Mormon Genealogy Center. With the help of the very nice staff, Adele and I got to work tracking down some of our ancestry. I was able to track back 6 generations on my mother’s side in about two hours! We talked to some folks who were spending their full vacations there.
The next day we hopped on the bus for the long trip to Jackson, Wyoming, where we were to stay for two nights at the spectacular Jackson Lake Lodge – right in the middle of the Grand Tetons. We spent our time looking at the mountains and animals (there was a mother and baby moose hanging out in the middle of the cabins!) and took some short bus rides around the Park. We also took a short float trip down the Snake River. Beautiful scenery, but the animals were nowhere to be seen.
We next headed for Yellowstone and the famed Old Faithful Inn. Yellowstone was even more spectacular than I had thought. In addition to Old Faithful, there are geysers continually going off all over the place. There were lots of trails where you could see the features close up. I wish we could have spent more time there but we had to move on to Lake Yellowstone. The Lake Yellowstone Lodge featured another beautiful view and several bison grazing on the front lawn.