After checking out of the hotel, we piled in the car and started driving towards Yellowstone through Grand Tetons National Park. Unfortunately, we didn't get very far before noticing a strange sound coming from the front tire wells of our rented Chevy Tahoe. It sounded like something scraping against the bottom of the car or pressing against the tires, so we decided it was better to be safe than sorry and we drove back to the airport to see about getting a new rental car. 
Hey, it may not perform well, but it sure does look good silhouetted against the mountain covered skyline.The rental agency apologized and gave us the keys to another Chevy Tahoe (charcoal-colored this time). We drove out to the lot to pick it up and soon after repacking all of our luggage into the new car, we noticed that the A/C did not work. At all. So my dad ran back inside to see about getting a new car.
The new car they gave us was a Yukon...which didn't have a middle seat for Allison...so my dad went back in to get a fourth car. This one finally worked. It was a white Chevy Suburban...even bigger than the Tahoe. We didn't even have to put the backseat down to fit the luggage in the trunk!
Before we left for Yellowstone, we drove back to the Grand Tetons Visitor's Center to send a couple postcards. As we were leaving the Center, we saw a bunch of cars pulled off to the side of the road which, as you already know, means that there's been an animal sighting. My mom reached for her binoculars and looked through the trees to see...a moose! It was one of the few animals we hadn't seen yet (I have been waiting for years to see a big-horned sheep, which I still have yet to see..) so it was exciting to see it, especially when we were just about to leave the Grand Tetons.
I also used this opportunity to take another shot of a Chevy against the skyline:
After checking out the moose for a while and waiting to see if he was going to do anything cool, we decided to finally head out to Yellowstone, which is just north of Grand Tetons. We entered at the southeast entrance and our first stop was at a place called Clark Lake (or maybe Clark Falls) where we took pictures of a waterfall and a small bridge.
Next, we stopped at a cool sign marking the Continental Divide and the current elevation. 
I guess the road that we were on curved back and forth across the Continental Divide, because soon after we began seeing signs for it every mile or so. From that point on, we basically made our way through the park bit by bit, stopping every time we saw an animal or scenic viewpoint. And let me tell you, in Yellowstone it is very, very hard to go more than a mile or so without seeing one of those two things. There were animals everywhere! Elk and bison definitely made up the greatest majority (they are more populous than squirrels and birds are on the east coast).
We eventually made it to the Visitor's Center, which had a cool exhibit on the famous wildfire of 1988, which affected 36% of the park and forced it to close down to visitors until it was eventually put out by snowfall in early September. We also went into the theater at the center to watch a film on the fires, which ended up being a half-hour long propaganda piece about how the National Park Service was right in their decision to let wildfires burn out naturally in the park instead of stepping in to prevent them (which they did end up doing) and that the fire was, in the end, a wonderful thing for the park. Apparently, the "self-proclaimed experts of wildfires" in the American media and public were completely wrong about viewing wildfires in a negative light.
You'll notice some of the dead trees lying on the hill in the back...it's as if they are saying, "Thank you, fire."We left the theater and decided to go to Old Faithful next to see the famous geyser erupt. On this day the geyser was going off at 90 minute intervals, so we had to wait about an hour once we reached the Old Faithful area. While we were waiting, we went into the small Old Faithful lodge and got a bite to eat and an Old Faithful Ale to drink.
By the time Old Faithful was planning to erupt, we were sitting outside on one of the hundreds of benches surrounding the geyser. It began giving off little bursts of steam, which got everyone extremely excited and caused Allison to use nearly all of the memory on her camera recording a video of what was happening. 
A chipmunk waiting for Old Faithful to go off.Finally, the real thing happened and yes, it was very awesome. The thing blew up very very high and everyone clapped after it went off for a few minutes.
After Old Faithful, we decided to walk along this wooden path that gives you a tour of some smaller geysers nearby. There were warning signs everywhere about stepping off the path into the "thermal area."
Apparently, you are not supposed to jump up and down on the geysers.Some of the geysers were really cool and were really blue or bubbled up with weird-looking mud. Some of the geysers gave off really funky smells.
When we finished the walk, we went over to the magnificent Old Faithful Inn, which is probably the most incredible hotel I've ever seen.
We spent some time in the gift shop inside the hotel and by the time we finished it was time for Old Faithful to go off again. We went outside to see it from a different angle and in a different light, which actually made it look even cooler than before.
When the geyser finished exploding, we went back to the car and made our way out of the park. On our way, we saw another group of bison with their children:
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