Driving from Wyoming to Washington

Post Yellowstone, the original plan was to head up to Glacier National Park. Feeling the pressure of time and weather, we decided to head west instead after a little soul searching. We’d still love to see Glacier, but it deserves its own trip, plus we saw similar mountains relatively recently in South America.

Yellowstone National Park

Yellowstone is America’s oldest National Park. It covers a huge area of land. Most of the sights are drive-able along a 100 mile loop road. We drove most of it but did manage to fit in a little hiking as well.

Grand Teton National Park

Unfortunately Grand Teton National Park was a bit of a bust for us, but you can’t expect to win them all.

Driving in, the mountains were gorgeous. They really reminded us of the dramatic peaks of Patagonia. As one hiking guidebook put it, this is the way mountains are supposed to look.

Camping that night at one of the more popular tent-only areas in the central section of the park, we were treated to a symphony of elk bugling. It was much louder than what we had heard in Rocky Mountain National Park, even though they had to have been further away.

The next morning we planned on hiking up one of the valleys to do an overnight in the mountains, but it was not to be. It had rained overnight and though it was not actively raining as we packed up, the could cover was obscuring the mountain views. The forecast called for more of the same, including bouts of rain and snow for the next few days, so instead of suffering through, we decided to move on to Yellowstone where the sights are much closer to the ground. We’re not short on time yet, but we would be soon if we waited for good weather everywhere.

The park was great and a place we’d like to visit again someday. There’s a 39 mile long trail that runs the length of the park through the mountains that looks like it would be a really cool trip. Until next time!

Into Wyoming

Leaving Denver, we drove north into Wyoming. We didn’t take a main highway, but rather a smaller road going northwest towards Grand Teton National Park. Though the scenery was much more interesting than one can assume the main artery to be, there were two drawbacks to taking this road.

1)  No “Welcome to Wyoming” sign to add to our photo collection. This happened again coming in from the west a week later, so maybe Wyoming is balancing its budget by cutting highway signs.

2) Our car suffered an injury. Poor windshield!

I suppose neither was the route’s fault, really.  It was nice to get off the main highway and into the rural areas that actually look different from state to state, instead of the continuous billboards and gas stations.