Yellowstone 2015

Yellowstone 

Since we had a little time on our hands and we had the good fortune to have our two sons at home for a while, we decided to take a family trip up to Yellowstone National Park. None of us had ever been there before.

We hopped in the car and headed north with our first nights goal being Salt Lake City, Utah .

High Desert near St. George, Utah

Trolley Square is a restored shopping and dining center. 

 We had dinner at a Spaghetti factory in Trolley Square so named because this was the Trolley barn where the Salt Lake Trolleys were kept overnight and maintained. SLC had quite a network of rail transit at one time reaching 146 miles including a line up to Park City. I can imagine they wish they had it today. The SLC trolleys ran until 1946 and were replaced with busses. Rail transit in SLC is starting to make a come back with about 18 miles of new service with more to come. This story is the same for many western cities.

After dinner we drove and walked around downtown and searched for my wife's grandfathers' house where her father, uncle, aunt and mother lived.  We spent our first night at a Marriott Springfield Inn and Suites about 4 miles south of downtown.

 On the left is Mormon Temple in downtown SLC in Temple Square. We visited the temple although non-Mormons can't get in to this one. I wonder if there is a secret handshake or something as I am sure "Gentiles" have tried to get in. We sought information on Lynn's family history to help us locate the house but some of the information was vague. I was later told that if you try to enter, they ask you flat out if you are Mormon and you have to show an ID card.
We left SLC and headed to West Yellowstone.  The drive took us north along the front range of the mountains, with desert landscape giving way to more trees and mountains. We arrived in the late afternoon and checked into the Gray Wolf Inn. We had dinner at a place called the Slipper Otter a kind of woodsy restaurant.





Once we entered the Yellowstone, there were many choices of places you could go. Our first stop was a place where hot steamy water flowed into the Yellowstone River. The water is scalding hot and originates deep within the Yellowstone caldera. Its hard to get your head around the fact that most of Yellowstone is really a giant volcano.




The different colors are from the various metals, but mostly iron that exist beneath the surface.