So, it’s official—we survived bear country with no crazy
bear attack stories, but, fortunately, TONS of bear sightings (and other crazy
wildlife sightings!). We just finished up a week and a half tour of three of the great national parks: Yellowstone, Grand Teton and Glacier National Park. What a ridiculously
amazing part of the country. Listen up people…VISIT THESE PLACES! Seriously, I
can’t stress it enough. We live in a beautiful country full of spectacularly
amazing and awe-inspiring national parks. We are so fortunate that our
government has preserved these places and has made them accessible to the
public. I fully understand the appeal of traveling abroad and experiencing
other cultures and other countries—in fact, I’m a huge advocate of traveling
abroad so that people understand that the U.S. is not the center of the
world—but, I am now a bigger advocate of exploring your own country! Who knows
what these places will be like in twenty, thirty or forty years. They are for
sure different (some even drastically different) than they were twenty, thirty
and forty years prior. So I strongly encourage you to check out these places stat!
I will be more than happy to assist any of you with the planning and
nitty-gritty details of visiting any of these parks. Just shoot me an email!
Now that I’ve lectured you all, I’ll get to the fun part…pictures!
There’s really no other way to convey our experiences in the three parks. Here
goes, in the order in which we saw them (which, as I’ll explain later, is the
BEST order in which to view them!).
1) Yellowstone National Park
We approached Yellowstone from Cody, Wyoming,
an adorable little town that is east of the park. Prior to discussing Yellowstone, I’ll recap a quick side story about our trip
to Cody. On our drive to Cody from Ten Sleep, we stopped by Uptown Café, a
small restaurant in Greybull, Wyoming,
aka the Middle-of-Nowhere, Wyoming.
Oh boy, do Marco and I know how to choose them (Cindy, you’ll like this story)!
First off, as we walked in, the waitress asked us if we wanted to sit in the
smoking or non-smoking section. Um, there are restaurants out there that still
have smoking sections!? What!? That one threw me for a loop. Naturally, we
chose the non-cancer-inducing section. The only other patrons in the non-smoking
section were two cowboy-looking gents in their mid-40s. They were clearly there
only to flirt with the two waitresses, both of whom were half the men’s age.
One of the waitresses was totally biting (I think she was looking for a ticket
out of the waitressing biz and thought an older cowboy-gent was just the ticket!)
and the other was not at all interested. Very intriguing situation to scope…I love
people watching. Anyways, when we first sit down, I decide to use the restroom
to wash my dirty climbing hands before eating. In order to get to the restroom,
I have to walk around the entire restaurant and through the nasty smoking
section. The only two patrons in the smoking section were two seriously old, super
skeazy men. Gross. It was one of those situations where I wish I had on a super
baggy sweatsuit and a hat to avoid any looks from them. Though I get the
feeling they would have looked at just about anything that remotely resembled a
female. As I returned to the table, Marco indicated he was going to wash his
hands. All I could think is “Oh no, how are these men going to react to seeing
a long-haired, bun-wearing Guatemalan!” Fortunately, he returned to the table
without incident. Phew! The restaurant itself was mediocre—I ordered a bacon
cheeseburger and the cheese was a cold, unmelted Kraft single. But, slight
redemption, they served tater tots! As mentioned previously, there were only
two waitresses working the whole place. We rolled in around 8:30—I think they
closed at 9—and as we were eating, they started to clean the salad bar that was
located behind our table. During this process, I hear one waitress drop a bunch
of plates and silverware. After the other waitress giggles uncontrollably, the
waitress that dropped the items says, “Whatever, thirty second rule, right?” Um,
what? GROSS! First of all, it’s a FIVE second rule…thirty seconds is far too
long. Second of all, that rule DOES NOT exist in a restaurant! Particularly in a
restaurant with people eating in it! The whole situation was pretty humorous.
And I can’t really complain anyways…our notion of washing dishes has consisted
of wiping things out with a wet paper towel. We use soap and a sponge probably once every few weeks when we
snag a luxury campsite with a dishwashing station!
And now, for Marco’s favorite part of the story. Ever since
we hit “the west,” Marco has consistently tried to scope out tumbleweed. For
some inexplicable reason, he has been obsessed with tracking down tumbleweed in
action! We’ve been in some pretty sparsely populated towns, and, much to his
disappointment, he has yet to see any. That is, until our stop in Greybull, WY. As
we left the restaurant and crossed the street to our van, there it was! Stuck
right under our back tire…TUMBLEWEED!
We both nearly peed our pants laughing. We could not believe
it! I mean, it wasn’t exactly “tumbleweed in action,” but it was almost even
more rewarding to think that at some point it was rolling down the street and
it lodged itself under our van! After we recovered, we dislodged the tumbleweed
and started to get in the car. Marco was on driving duty that night, so he went
around to get in the driver’s side. As he was leaning over to unlock my door (yup, our van does not have power locks or windows...we're old school!),
the wind blew hard and, sure enough, the tumbleweed started to tumble straight at
me! And that little thing was super sharp—it was like a tumbleweed of death! He
unlocked my door just in time for me to jump in. The tumbleweed almost blew up
in the door of the van.
 |
| The whole experience was pretty ridiculous (though maybe it was one of those “You had to be there!” things…sorry if that story was completely boring!). |
Okay, now that I satisfied my aunt’s request for a crazy “local”
story, back to the gist of this entry. Yellowstone!
As I was saying previously, I think it’s best to cover the national parks via
pictures. But first, a quick blurb on what we did. We entered Yellowstone via
the East Entrance (it should be noted, the drive along Route 16 from Cody to Yellowstone
was UNREAL and completely beautiful). Yellowstone essentially consists of a 142
mile grand loop road in the shape of a figure 8, which is accessible via east,
west, north, northeast and south entrances. We came in via the East Entrance
and drove southwest towards Old Faithful,
which is located on the southwestern portion of the figure 8. During our first
day we viewed the geysers. It takes roughly one hour to travel 20 miles in Yellowstone mainly due to bison traffic jams and tourists
blocking up the roadways to photograph wildlife. So, even though the loop is
only 142 or so miles, it takes a long time to get around! On our second day, we
checked out the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, did a short hike around the area,
and drove more of the main loop. On our third day, we went horse back riding
through the backcountry (Sorry, no pictures of Marco on his horse! Cameras
spook the horses.). During the three days, we managed to drive the entire grand
loop!
And now, the pictures.
Random Scenic Shots From Our Drive Around Yellowstone
 |
| Marco checking out a small lake just inside the East Entrance. |
 |
| Yellowstone Lake from a distance. |
 |
| Stopping by a river along Firehole Canyon Drive. |
 |
| Another shot from Firehole Canyon Drive. |
The Geysers & Hot Springs
There are geysers and hot springs
all over Yellowstone. We started with
Old Faithful and the Upper
Geyser Basin
and made our way north up along the western side of the park. It was crazy the
amount of steam rising up everywhere.
 |
| Old Faithful about to erupt. |
 |
| Old Faithful mid-eruption. |
 |
| Old Faithful post-eruption...the steam was just seeping out of the ground all around the mouth of the geyser. |
 |
| Upper Geyser Basin. |
 |
| This was called Dragon’s Mouth Spring. It genuinely resembled a cave in which a dragon was sleeping. You could hear the waves lapping against the walls of the cave. Very hobbit-esque! It was my favorite! |
Grand Canyon of The Yellowstone
This is an amazing area to check out. There’s a North Rim
and South Rim drive, which take you along the rim of the canyon formed by Yellowstone River. It’s quite inspiring. We hiked
along the South Rim.
 |
| Yellowstone River’s Lower Falls. At 308 feet, it is almost twice as tall as Niagra Falls! |
 |
| My make-shift bear bell! We tied a spoon to a pot lid. It made TONS of noise! No bear sightings on our hike. |
 |
| Yellowstone River's Upper Falls. |
The Wildlife
We saw tons of wildlife throughout our tour of Yellowstone. It’s pretty easy to spot the wildlife—all
you need to do is look for the traffic jam of cars along the side of the road.
The abundance of tourists snapping pictures makes the whole experience feel
less authentic and very zoo-like, even though the reality is we’re in the wild
and not in a zoo. Marco and I grew very sick and tired of the crowds very
quickly. However, we managed to have our own personal, intimate wildlife
experience with a bear! See below for details.
RAVENS
 |
| Our first of many encounters with Yellowstone’s ravens. The ravens were Marco’s favorite animal in the park! He wanted to feed them so much! But we saw some people getting a ticket for feeding the animals. DON’T FEED WILDLIFE PEOPLE! |
BISON
Bison are essentially the equivalent of pigeons in NY. They
are EVERYWHERE in Yellowstone! By the end of
our first day we could have cared less about the bison! The only thing they did
was jam up the roadway and cause massive hour-long traffic jams!
If Bison are like squirrels, I would say elk are like deer.
You see them often enough, but they’re nonetheless pretty cool to see.
BEARS
In two days, we managed to have ELEVEN separate bear
sightings! And, of those eleven, three of the sightings were of a mama bear and
her cubs! It was pretty unreal. I guess the bears like us. Funny story—during
one of our sightings, the man next to us said “Wow, I’ve been to Yellowstone so many times over the course of my life and
I have never seen a bear. This is my first encounter!” I said, “Really?
We’ve been here two days and this is our sixth.” Oops, I think I crushed the
excitement of his one sighting. Most of our sightings were of black bears,
which, we learned, can either be brown or black. We had one sighting of a
grizzly bear, but we didn't catch it on camera. It occurred as we were exiting
our campground in the afternoon. As we neared the exit, we were stopped by the
ranger. Then, all of a sudden, we heard two shots fired. We looked up and there
was this adorable grizzly running into the woods! Apparently he got too close
to the campground and got a bean bag shot to the butt. Poor thing. So, we saw a
grizzly sprinting through the forest, but no pictures, unfortunately.
 |
| Our first bear sighting...he was just waking up from a nap! |
 |
| A lone black bear roaming around. |
 |
| Mama black bear and her two little brown cubs. |
 |
| Marco and I spotted this bear through the woods and across a lake. We were the only ones to pull over. It was really amazing to experience this without the crazy crowds and tourists. The bear was pretty far away, so we’re not sure if it was a grizzly or black bear, but it kind of looks like a grizzly! |
 |
| A close-up of our little bear! |
 |
| As our sightings progressed, the bears got closer and closer! Don’t worry Mom, there was always a ranger on hand who was making sure they didn’t get too close for comfort. |
 |
| Mama bear and her cub...his ears were almost as big as his body. |
 |
| Another mama black bear and her two cubs. Note the one running at the mama! He was so cute and very playful. He was running around everywhere. |
 |
| Both of the cubs exploring. |
 |
| This little cub had a little trouble getting over the trees. |
 |
| The mama bear was teaching the cubs how to dig in the dead trees. It was very cool to watch. |
 |
| And then the bears decided to cross the street. They obviously are accustomed to humans. The ranger parted the cars and let them cross…they were so close! |
A LONE COYOTE & WOLF
In addition to the above, we also saw a lone coyote on one
of our night drives around the park. It was skulking along the side of the
street looking super sketch! The following morning, we saw a single wolf
hunting elk in a huge field! The whole experience was so quick, we didn’t get
any pictures. But other people around us confirmed it was a wolf rather than a
coyote. It was very cool to see.
The only animal we did not see, which we were really on the
lookout for, was a moose. It was the last remaining animal on our tick list of
“must see” wildlife. Oh well, we still had Grand Teton
and Glacier to come!
2. Grand Teton National Park
After a few days at Yellowstone, we drove south to Grand Teton. The two parks are connected and the drive
from the south of Yellowstone into Grand Teton
is only about an hour. Now, we for sure were impressed with Yellowstone and
thought it was great, but, as soon as we drove towards the Tetons, all thoughts
of Yellowstone vanished!
 |
| Though from a very far distance, this was our first glimpse of what was to come. |
If the crowds and over-the-top-touristy aspect of
Yellowstone were getting us down,
Grand Teton
revived us! It was exactly what we needed. Yellowstone is intriguing due to the
close encounters with wildlife and the crazy, spectacular geysers,
hot springs, mud volcanoes
and other scenic draws.
Grand Teton, on the
other hand, is captivating due to its plain, unparalleled and simple beauty. The
mountains are austerely stunning and that’s a fact. The beauty of it all felt
more organic and less contrived than Yellowstone (even though, admittedly,
Yellowstone is organic and natural…maybe it was the huge number of tourists,
but something about if felt contrived after we had Grand Teton to compare it
to). So, as mentioned above, this is why I’m glad we saw
Yellowstone
first. Had we seen it after
Grand Teton, it
would have been a bit of a disappointment.
And back to the mountains. Holy Grand
Teton! The range of mountains in the Tetons is spectacular. We
spent our first afternoon driving in from the north and viewing them from a
highway on the east side of the range. After speaking to a ranger, we got the
beta on free camping—we just had to venture into the national forest and park
our car as if we were planning to hike into the forest and camp. “Dispersed
camping” (= hiking into the forest and pitching your tent) is free. So, not
only did we save some cash, but we got to catch the super moon from a beautiful
and serene parking lot over a huge lake in the middle of the Bridger-Teton National
Forest. During our first full day at the park we
drove the alleged “scenic” road and hiked around Jenny
Lake, String
Lake and Leigh Lake.
Our review—it was mediocre. A bit too touristy again. And not the greatest way
to view the park. It was definitely beautiful, but we should have spent the day
doing a hike or renting kayaks or taking in the scenes some other way. We would
not recommend it. Our second day, on the other hand, was AMAZING. We did a 10
mile round trip hike to Surprise Lake and Amphitheater
Lake. The hike gained 3,000
feet in elevation (Amphitheater
Lake is at 9,698 feet in
elevation), so it was pretty strenuous. The hike itself was scenic, but the lakes
at the top were for sure the real prize. We were up in deep snow and got to eat
lunch at a gorgeous lake with hardly anyone around. Marco got the serious itch
to head back one day and summit the Grand Teton.
Zac, Dirk, Bill, Ben Carlson, Ben Huber, Buell and others, watch out! He is
definitely going to hit you up to plan a trip back. He was incredibly inspired
and couldn’t take his eyes off the summit. As for our hope of seeing moose, we
were sorely let down. No moose sighting in the Tetons! Our last hope was
Glacier!
Now for the pictures!
Scenic Shots From Our Drive Into Grand
Teton
Day 1: Jenny Lake, String
Lake, & Leigh Lake
 |
| View from hike along Leigh Lake. |
 |
| Leigh Lake. |
 |
| Hike to Hidden Falls along Jenny Lake. |
3. Glacier National Park
Finally, my favorite! Located 8-9 hours north of Yellowstone
in Montana on the border of Canada, Glacier National Park
is the pinnacle of all national parks! It was far and away my favorite national
park. Yellowstone hands down felt like a
tourist destination; there was a manufactured feel to it all. Everything was so
accessible and did not feel as natural as I would have liked. Grand
Teton was definitely more organic of an experience, but again, it
felt like it was under human control. The mountain range was surrounded by
small towns and ranches. Again, it felt very accessible. While we were in
Glacier, on the other hand, I felt like nature was at its finest and fiercest.
The mountains, lakes, forests, snow and other weather were in full control of
the situation and all the surroundings. I felt very small and very fragile in
the environment; totally NOT in control. Glacier National Park
sees most of its visitors in July and August—our visit in late June is
considered “early” by most standards. Most roads and visitor facilities in
Glacier close October through May. To visit the park during the winter months,
you must be very prepared for winter storms and be well-versed in how to
survive in extreme conditions. My impression of Glacier is that the mountains
open their arms up to humans a very short couple months of the year, just to
remind humans that they can visit and appreciate the beauty of nature but they
better not try to control anything about Glacier National Park
because they will never be in control. Between unexpected, enormous snowfalls
(which can occur any month of the year, summer included), avalanches, and the
always present and dangerous wildlife, Glacier is a place to visit and
appreciate nature at its finest. I fell in love. Marco agrees with my opinion
and believes that Glacier is the most scenic and beautiful park, but in terms
of his favorite park, he was too drawn by the pull of the Tetons to focus on
anything else. He is already planning his next trip back to the Tetons.
We spent two days in Glacier. We entered the park on the
east side via the towns of St. Mary and Babb. Apparently, the large majority of
people enter the park through the west side via the Apgar Visitor
Center. There is much
more going on in terms of restaurants, hotels, and tourist attractions on the
west side. However, I’m very relieved we entered on the west side for a couple
reasons. First, we got to spend our first day in the Many Glacier area and did
a phenomenal hike to Grinnell Glacier (note, the last mile of the hike was
closed due to extremely hazardous snow conditions). I think this was the
perfect way to meet Glacier
National Park. The hike
was breathtakingly gorgeous and introduced us to the mountains, lakes, forests
and glaciers of Glacier. The day was cloudy and we got rained on a couple
times, but it made the whole experience that much more majestic. I honestly
felt like we were going to see elves and hobbits in the forests and trolls on
the mountains. It all felt very magical! On our second day we drove the Going-to-the-Sun Road,
which cuts across Glacier
National Park. I’m pretty
sure (99% positive) it’s the only driving route across Glacier National Park.
The majority of the park appears to be accessible via hiking trails. Because
the majority of people enter Glacier on the west side, they drive the road from
west to east. We, on the other hand, drove from east to west, so we were able
to miss a lot of traffic jams that occurred in the opposite direction. The
drive was by far the most beautiful drive I have ever done (and probably will
ever do). I am not even going to attempt to describe it. Check out the pictures
and then plan your own trip to Glacier!
Meet
Glacier National
Park!
 |
| St. Mary Lake |
 |
| The top of the mountain was stuck in a cloud. |
 |
| Saint Mary Lake |
 |
| This shot makes me feel like we're in the Sound of Music... |
 |
| The further up we climbed, the deeper the snow got. |
 |
| Mountain goat! Up close and personal. He was very friendly/humanized. He walked straight up to one man who was taking his picture and got within five feet of him. I, personally, would have backed the _ _ _ _ up, but the guy kept on snapping pictures. |
 |
| The goat was intrigued by our van and decided to pose with Bean. I was a little late in snapping the shot. |
 |
| Marco, drinking his coffee and taking in the ridic view. |
 |
| Bird Woman Falls |
 |
| Bird Woman Falls |
 |
| Skipping stones in McDonald Creek. |
Unfortunately, we managed to tour all three national parks and we did not spot a single moose! We were pretty bummed...it was the only animal on our tick list that we didn't see! That is, until we passed a young moose on the highway JUST as we were leaving Montana! The spotting occurred on Interstate 90 right after Exit 0 (yes, they have an Exit 0) as we were leaving Montana and entering Idaho. Marco pointed to what he thought was a deer on the side of the highway, and, as we approached, we both yelled, "Moose! It's a moose!" It was pretty enormous, even for a younger moose. It had no antlers and was very tall and lanky. It got spooked and stumbled up a slope. It would have been great to see a moose in one of the parks, but we'll settle for a highway viewing. Tick list done!
And that wraps up our first tour of the great national parks! I very strongly recommend a visit to all of them, but particularly to Glacier. And, unfortunately, you have to go soon! It is predicted that there will be no more glaciers left in the park by 2030. There were once 150 glaciers in the park, but now there are only 25 or so. Yikes! All of the information we saw indicated that the glaciers are melting at a very rapid rate. It's very sad that my kids (when I have them) will not be able to see the same Glacier National Park that I was able to see.
We hope everyone is doing well and keeping cool. Looks like the temps are heating up all over the country. That's our cue to keep heading north. Stay tuned for another update soon! Lots of love.
Awesome pics, sis! Definitely looks like a grizzly in those far shots; the raised shoulders give it away. Cool stuff. I'm pretty sure that fowl is a grouse, and that "fungus" is witches hair. So jealous of your travels and all the sights you two took in.
ReplyDelete