Jellystone National Park, WY

We woke early on Thursday morning, broke down camp, packed it up and headed out. We were driving through Yellowstone from south to north on our way to Glacier. We opted not to stay overnight as all we’ve heard is how crowded the park is, but I still wanted to see it. The park was indeed crowded, but for good reason. It’s beautiful. And so varied! From the south, to the north, to the east and to the west, each sector of the park is unique! We stopped to see some geothermal action which was cool! We chose not to see Old Faithful based on the bad recommendation from the couple we met who were cycling across the US. They said there are benches set up for people to sit and wait and there were people around them complaining that the geyser was not going off and they had been told 1 hour.... I do not have patience for tourons like that. It’s estimated that the geyser goes off every hour or hour fifteen. But I mean, it’s nature…. So! We stopped and saw some other neat geothermal action!

Here is a super short video of a boiling mud puddle, how neat is that?!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NTAxvqEtATs&feature=youtu.be

The Abyss Pool

Bones of an animal (or unattended child?) in the geothermal waters...

Then we stopped for lunch at Gull Point. We had a lovely trunk lunch at a picnic table on the lake. We met a big family from Wisconsin! They felt bad for us and gave us cake! They saw us eating our backpacking food and brought us chocolate cake, saying we’d burn off the calories a lot sooner than they would! I don’t really like cake so Daveed got 2 pieces!

After lunch we headed through the northern part of the park and saw tons of wildlifes! TONS of buffalo! Elk! Mule deer! Sheep! And the quintessential black bear! On two separate occasions we saw small juvenile black bears. Little round ears and all. Sweet, now that we’ve seen bears from the safety and comfort of the car, I’m good. Really hoping to not see any on the trail….

We didn't get any pictures of the wildlifes we saw, but we did get this sweet shot of people looking at wildlifes! Do not approach the wildlifes- these people did not listen! They were looking at big ol mule deer and an elk with a huge rack

Yellowstone has beautiful scenery with mountains as the backdrop for the whole southern/south eastern sector

Lunch at Gull Point

We by passed Yellowstone Falls lookout proper due to over crowding, but we got to see this view instead! This is just above the falls.

We stopped in Great Falls, MT which is the hometown of my coworker Amy! One of her favorite childhood food joints was Taco Treat, so we had to stop there! The food was terrible! But it was a fun experience and super fun to send Amy a picture of the Taco Treat sign :) Then it was the final push to Glacier. 

Saw this cool heart shaped cut out in the cloud on our way to Great Falls, MT

Into the west

We drove the last hour in the dark and it was FREAKY. The road is narrow and closed in on the sides with thick trees and brush with plenty of blind curves. Deer. Jack rabbits. Stray dogs. WILD HORSES. Oh my. All of them on the road. All of them scaring the ever livin out of me. Especially the wild horses. Not something I’m accustom to seeing around a blind curve: 5 wild horses in the road. WHOAH NELLY! I think there were 4 or 5 occasions when there were horses on the road. Oi. I was so glad when we finally rolled into the campground and got off that road, I could finally relax! We arrived around 10:30, got our site assignment, set up the tent and crashed.

Grand Teton National Park, WY

The Tetons have been on my “list” for about as long as Glacier has. I was so excited to add it to the map when planning our road trip. Even though our stay was short, I’m so glad I finally got to see the Tetons with my own peepers! The mountains have a very unique look with their triangle/shark tooth peaks. A very picturesque view with Jackson Lake in the foreground. Now I know why these mountains are so heavily photographed.

We arrived in the Tetons on Tuesday night with enough time to find a campsite at Colter Bay and have a “backpacker’s dinner” on the shore of Jackson Lake with an awesome view of the Teton range. We watched the sun set behind the mountains while we boiled water and made a freeze dried backpacking meal. I wouldn't have it any other way: a gorgeous, secluded view passing a bag of food back and forth between David and I :) Just in time for us to finish eating and the sun to set, then the skeeters came out. In FULL force! AH! We packed it up and hauled ass back to camp. I remember when we lived in Alaska we would try to out walk/run the skeeters, now I was doing it again, 20 years later! For some reason they left me mostly alone but swarmed Daveed. All over his hat, jacket, pants- every where! We got back to camp and took refuge in the tent.

Dinner in the Tetons!

Next morning we woke to a blue bird day with calm waters on Jackson Lake, which made for a gorgeous reflection of the mountains. We decided to do an easy hike so we would have time to check out Jenny Lake and do some other cruisin around the park-- we were on a mission to see some wildlifes! I was super disappointed that I only saw one small herd of domestic buffalo when we first crossed the border into South Dakota. I wanted to see some real deal wildlifes!

We decided to hike to the summit of Signal Mountain, which is about 6 miles round trip. Word. We donned the perfume of our summer: sunscreen and bug spray, and hit the trail. The hike was very pleasant, the first part in the woods, the middle part exposed with awesome views of the Teton range, and the last bit switchbacks up and up in the shaded woods. The skeeters were super bad in patches, even with plenty of bug spray they buzzed our ears and got us on all of the smallest parts we missed with bug spray! GAH! They got me on my forehead and underneath my sunglasses!

We reached the false summit, took a few pics then continued on. We ran into a fire crew that was removing wildfire “fuel” from the woods. They were taking down dead trees and removing fallen trees. If a wildfire broke out, there wouldn't be as much fuel for the fire, causing it to die out sooner and therefore creating a barrier between the lodge, other tourist things and the grasslands that buffalo and elk frequent on the other side of the mountain. We continued to the summit and had the place to ourselves! Due to the wildfire work, the road that goes to the summit was closed, so there was only hiker traffic and no one went beyond the false summit- lucky for us! We had lunch at the picnic table right next to the geological marker for the summit, awesome! We baked for an hour or so in the sun, shirts optional, and enjoyed our lunch.

Summit of Signal Mountain

Summit lunch, shirts optional!

On our way down, we bumped into Pete from Miguel’s! Say what?? We thought he lived in Lexington/the Red, but no! He has been on a helicopter wildfire crew for the past 12 years and lives at Miguel’s during the “off season” from his wildfire job. He was helping out with cutting down dead trees. Super random to bump into him on Signal Mountain of all places! We thought our chance encounter with Dave and Julia in Ten Sleep was random, this tops it! We had a nice chat with Pete then headed for the cover of shade on the trail.

Shoreline of Jenny Lake

Cooling off

After we got back to the car, we had some ice cream, then headed to Jenny Lake. Wow. As beautiful as everyone said it would be. We walked in the lake up to our knees to cool off and boy did it feel good! After meandering along the lake for a while we headed back to the car, ready to EAT. We stopped at the bathroom and met a young couple who were biking across the US! They started in Seattle, I think, and were headed all the way to Boston! They were fun to talk to and also gave us a map of Yellowstone, which is where they came from and where we were going! The guy looked on his fancy maps for a place for us to go eat: his advice was to avoid Jackson Hole as it’s a tourist trap, so maybe try Moose? It’s closer and will surely be cheaper. Word. Well, we missed the turn off for Moose…..I was expecting to drive through a small town, but it turns out Moose is literally a turn off from the main road that runs through the Tetons, it looks like a general store and gas station, not a town :) Soooo, we keep on driving thinking we’ll be in Moose any minute...and then we are entering Jackson Hole. Huh. Oh well, we are WAY too hungry to drive anywhere else, so I guess we’ll eat here. Jackson Hole reminded us of an Aspen type town. Lots of rich people wearing cowboy boots and designer jeans. I’m not judging these people, on the contrary I was laughing at US at how much we did not fit in. We were in our hiking clothes, smelled of sweat, bug spray and sunscreen. I was wearing my hiking hat all day so there was no way I was taking it off, my hair was a sweaty, matted down mess!

We walked around for a bit trying to find a “reasonably” priced restaurant… Yeah right. So we ended up at an Italian restaurant named Nani’s. It was delish! I had their cocktail special of the summer and can’t wait to make it myself! It was called the Spaghetti Western, can’t think of a better name given the town. It had whiskey, amaretto and orange san pellagrino. Yum! Daveed had Blanton’s, you know it’s a fancy restaurant when Blanton’s is on the menu and you are not in Kentucky! We cleaned our plates, rolled ourselves out of the restaurant and realized we had an hour an a half drive back to camp. Woof. We were both so tired and drowsy.

We took the other half of “the loop” back to camp, which is what Pete recommended we drive if we wanted to see wildlifes. Well, we were not disappointed! We saw elk, mule deer and finally, buffalo!!!! Buffalo crossing the road, buffalo in the fields, buffalo in the trees, buffalo every where! Hooray!! Wildlifes! It was a great way to end our short stint in the Tetons.

We got back to camp and ran into the tent, evading the skeeters again.

Ten Sleep, WY

We rolled into Ten Sleep, WY on Sunday afternoon after a great day of driving. We stopped for gas and a trunk lunch break in the middle of nowhere, but at the fanciest, nicest gas station/rest stop/100 varieties of coffee and soda/cleanest bathrooms with the best smelling soap. If you ever roll past The Coffee Cup and need a break, I recommend it!

We rolled through Ten Sleep canyon and went straight to the brewery to get a guidebook. Then we found camping at Leigh Creek, to date it's my all time favorite campsite. Right next to a rushing creek with a nice picnic table. The sound of the creek was awesome and so relaxing. The canyon was really pretty, made me wish I knew more about geology. The rock was really cool, striped and layered.

We climbed at lower and upper Psychoactive walls after getting camp set up. The climbing was different than what we're used to in Kentucky. The rock is much sharper and blocky. The climbing style more techy and balancy. It was a fun change of pace. We had a good time climbing a few routes before the day light was gone.

Monday we climbed The Cigar and at the Downtown area. I had never heard of The Cigar until I saw a featured picture of it on NatGeo's instagram feed- had to climb it, and we did! It was fun and had all grades from 10a to I think 12d. We met a nice couple from Arizona who were also on a long road trip and they recommended stopping at the hot springs in Thermopolis, WY on our way to the Tetons. Free showers, that's all I needed to hear. Word. There were no showers in Ten Sleep.

I learned that the pockets in the wall, much like in the Red, are spidy holes. Spideys. Everywhere. In all of the pockets! Which was cruel because of course that spidey lair is the only hold that's gonna get you from here to the next hold! I practiced mind control on those moves- both to keep the spidey from moving and to get my princess ass over it.

Tuesday morning we packed it up and headed to the Tetons. On our way out of Ten Sleep we stopped at the one and only coffee shop in town and ran into Dave and Julia from West Virginia. The climbing world is so small! They were there to climb for a week or two. Then we stopped in Thermopolis at the hot springs and had a nice soak, and yep, a free shower! As part of the agreement, or was it a treaty? between the Native American tribe whose land the hot springs were on and the US government, the Natives wrote into the agreement that the hot springs and bath house would always be free to the public. Thank you!

YEEEHAAWW!

Trunk lunch

On the way to the Psychoactive walls

The Cigar

Hot springs in Thermopolis, WY

Thanks for the free shower!

Lets G-O!

It's go time! The car is packed to the rafters, gassed up and ready to go!

We had intentions of leaving Friday after work but David didn't get home till near midnight, and after working a 17 hour day, was not psyched to hop in the car. Thanks to M&P for bringing us midnight carnitas! :) So, we left on Saturday morning. After running a few errands and only going back to get one forgotten thing, we finally headed west around 10 or 10:30. We had awesome driving weather, apart from a strong storm system in South Dakota. We stopped to camp for the night in the Fort Pierre National Grasslands. We had intended to camp in the Buffalo Gap Grasslands but there was another huge storm system coming our way so we wanted to get the tent set up before the rain started.

We pulled off on a gravel road, found a flattish, grassy-ish spot and called it good. Apart from a couple dozen skeeter bites, which swarmed us from the grass, the spot was great: completely private, quiet and secluded. We didn't see any other cars. I suppose not many people camp on the side of the road, even if it's free.

Next morning we were up early with the sun and on the road by 7. There was nothing to stick around for, no water, no bathroom, so we stopped at the first rest stop we came across to wash up. The thing that took the longest to clean was our shoes. They were caked with mud from the grasslands! The mud peeled of in big pieces!

Made it to Rapid City and into Wyoming by mid morning! It was awesome to see the Big Horn Mountains as we drove into Wyoming! We had to drive 1000 miles to finally see some mountains!

Made my flips so heavy I couldn't hardly walk! Had to peel off the mud!