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Old Faithful Inn - Lobby
(note the Crow's Nest at the top) |
Broke camp early this morning to head out for the southern loop through Yellowstone. Though we had reservations at another campground in the park for tonight, it was similar to last night's and so, we decided to tour the park and head out to the Tetons to try to camp there since it's farther south and might be warmer too.
On the southern loop, we visited Old Faithful Inn and the famous Geyser. The 105 year old inn was spectacular!!! It's the world's largest log hotel, is constructed of Lodge Pole Pine and Fir and is absolutely breathtaking. It's main hall/lobby has seven levels, the top 4 of which are now off limits to guests. The framing in those upper levels housed stairs leading to catwalks and ultimately the crow's nest where the inn's orchestra played while guests danced 90' below in the lobby. Then, in 1959, a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit the park and twisted the catwalk & "nest", rendering it unsafe to use anymore. :-(
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Old Faithful Inn
Ceiling of the second floor hall-lounge |
The inn's original guestrooms are in what's referred to as "The Old House", where shared baths are the norm. Only these bathrooms are gorgeous with mosaic 1" hex tiled floors, chrome framing, vintage sconces in each stall, Carrerra marble sinks and walls...just beautiful.
Watched the geyser blow and headed out to the Grand Teton National Park just south of Yellowstone. Couldn't find any available camp sites, so we decided to check for lodging in Jackson Hole, WY, which was a "hoity-toity" town, almost staged for the tourist, of which there were many. Very few over-priced hotel rooms were available so we took off to Kemmerer, WY. We saw a herd of Pronghorn on the way along with hundreds of 10' high snow drift fences. The terrain was open and arid with a lot of scrub brush, the kind you'd envision becoming a tumbleweed.
If you've never heard of it before, you should know that it's home to J.C. Penney's Mother Store. Of course that was an empty storefront, as was most of the rest of the town; a very depressed town with a huge mine and not much else except a very nice Best Western where we spent the night, did laundry and had a great Mexican meal and a wonderful night's sleep.
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| Inn's shared bath for "Old House" guestrooms |
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| Old Faithful Geyser |
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| Lower falls on the park's southern loop drive. |
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| Ahhhhh - the Tetons! |
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| Mini visiting the Grand Teton Mountains! |
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