A little over a week ago we took a great trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. It was so beautiful and such an amazing trip. We drove to the parks from Salt Lake City and back in a rented Prius (53 miles to the gallon average for the trip!). We were able to see some beautiful landscapes on the way there and even drove by a town in Idaho where my father sheep herded when he came to the states.
I had some really high expectations for Yellowstone and I would say that it lived up to it. My only regret is that I didn't get to see any wolves in the wild. That would have required a 4:00 am wake-up to get to the location at the optimal viewing time and that just wasn't going to happen. But that gives me a good reason to go back. We were lucky enough to see a long list of animals: a grizzly bear, three brown bears (one of them a cub), bald eagles, marmots, mule deer, bison and bison babies, pronghorns, moose and a moose baby, and tons of other birds like ospreys and red hawks. So cool! One local we talked to in Jackson has been living there for 6 years and has never seen a bear in Yellowstone, so I think we were really lucky to see four in one day!
The landscape is amazing, especially the Teton range. We were there in the first week of June but there was still plenty of snow on the ground in the higher elevations. Lakes in Yellowstone still had ice in them but that made for a beautiful sight. The valleys were bright green and rivers and creeks are everywhere you look. I was so happy to be in such a large open wildlife space. We even manged to get in some whitewater rafting on the Snake river south of Jackson. We had reserved the date about a month before our trip and thankfully it turned out to be the warmest day of our vacation. The circulation in my fingers still slowed to a crawl in that water but it was worth it. That was my first whitewater experience and I will definitely try that again.
More photos on Flickr. Already thinking about the next vacation...
