Journeying Further West - Yellowstone, Grand Teton, Shoshone Falls!

Drove 132 miles yesterday, just around Yellowstone. WOW! Things here are really farther apart than we thought.

We got up about 7am. It was cold, but not as bad as I thought it would be. I didn’t have trouble sleeping because of cold, but I did keep sliding off the camp mats and losing my pillow in the night. Joe said he was cold, but mostly said the mummy-style sleeping bag was too small and restrictive for him and didn’t sleep that great. The kids all said they were plenty warm and cozy in the van. We are anticipating some more cool nights camping over the rest of our trip, and are thinking about stopping to buy some more sleeping bags rated for cooler weather for everyone.

Everything was cold and damp, but Joe and I hustled and just threw everything into the van and drove off with the kids still sleeping in the bed in the back at about 7:30am. We figured we had time for one more Yellowstone stop this morning, so we decided to see the Norris Geyser Basin. We arrived at about 8:15 am. There is construction in a few places in the park, and unfortunately that made the travel times longer than we thought. We took about 20-30 minutes to get everyone dressed and to the bathroom, and then did the short walk around the Porcelain Basin.

Overlooking the Porcelain Basin. Such a strange landscape!

Joey took this picture of me with the trail guide. I am totally one of those people who has to read about everything, and most of the time read it out loud so that everyone around knows and appreciates what they are looking at! Haha!

Early morning light coming through the trees. I'm not sure which person in my family took this photo, but I know it wasn't me.

More evidence that the kids have been taking lots of the photos. They held Joe and my phones together in camera mode to get this infinitely repeating photo of Joey!

It kind of seems like another planet walking around here.

This area of Yellowstone has hot springs, geysers, and lots of fumaroles (steam vents).

You're going to want to watch this video with the volume turned up!

Can you figure out who took this photo?

The bright green color is from bacteria that thrive in the warm waters of the hot spring. There were different colored bacterial mats all over yellowstone - oranges, greens, and browns mostly.

It took our slow group of kid sized travelers about 40 minutes to do that one, so we decided that would have to be good enough and that it was time to get back on the road. There was lots more to see here at Norris, and if it was a group of adults visiting Yellowstone I think we could have fit in a lot more, but still, we had a really good sampler of what Yellowstone has to offer in the couple of days we spent here, and have a much better idea of what we would like to spend more time doing the next time we visit. Ideally, I would love to have several weeks to spend in Yellowstone, and camp at each of the different sites and really explore those areas instead of spending so much time driving around in between things every day.

Our van at this point was very disorganized. For one, Joe and I had literally thrown in all the campsite stuff on top of the benches so that we could pull out early and get a parking spot at Norris before it got crowded. For another, we have been living in this van for almost a week at this point. We spent about an hour feeding everyone breakfast (cereal and milk today!), getting dressed (it was getting hot again and people wanted to shed some layers), and organizing the van again. We left Norris and headed out of Yellowstone at about 10:15am.

On the plus side, you do see some really cool things when driving around Yellowstone.

We reached Grant Village at about noon and decided to stop there for lunch and to fill up our water bottles, since there hadn’t been any drinking water at Norris that we could find. At this point our phones were able to pick up a cell signal (still no data or internet though), and I got some important work messages that I had to handle before we could continue on, so we ended up spending a bit of time here before finally heading out of Yellowstone.

Farewell, Yellowstone!

Our next item on the itinerary was to drive through Grand Teton National Park. Unfortunately we had no time to stop, but the scenery on the drive was absolutely fantastic. It reminded me of the mountain views we saw on our trip to Switzerland. Truly awesome.

We reached the visitor center at about 1:30pm and got a better map to help find our next destination - there was one overlook over the Snake River that Joe was really interested in stopping at since it looks like an iconic Zelda image of Hyrule. It was a little after 2pm when we reached the spot.

Photo of the "guy who found Hyrule" - see link above.

As were leaving the Snake River Overlook, a park ranger pulled alongside and told us they were going to be landing a helicopter there soon and were trying to clear everyone out. We told him we were leaving soon, just looking up directions. He was like, “no, just leave now, and pull over somewhere else for that”. Um...okay. We figured it must be some sort of emergency so we left. We were surprised to see they had all the roads leading to the overlook blocked off and traffic backed up for a LOOOONNNNG time, so we got there just in time I guess! Maybe we’ll check the news and see if we can figure out what was going on. Still have very spotty cell and data access though. (Which is why all these blog post updates are coming a bit late!)

Everything today was taking longer than we thought - we had planned to reach Craters of the Moon National Monument by early afternoon, and to camp there overnight, but we were still over three hours away. At 5pm we stopped at a gas station in Idaho Falls. Total miles traveled was almost 2000 at this point. We had begun to realize that going to Craters of the Moon just wasn’t going to be realistic. While it looks like an incredible place to visit, we called an audible and decided to skip that stop and save it for a future trip. Instead we headed for our next planned stop, Shoshone Falls. We pulled in there about 7:45 pm. We did have to pay $5 to enter the area and see the falls - too bad we didn't have enough time to stop and spend the day, because apparently there is also a lake to swim in, but we didn't continue driving to find it.

Katy REALLY wanted to take photos of the falls, but I was so nervous to let her hold my phone near the railing because it was such a steep drop down and I was afraid I'd lose my phone! She was near tears and we almost had a meltdown, but then I asked her where she wanted to stand to hold the camera and she said she would go up to a higher platform where there wasn't such a steep drop off. Here is Katy's video of the falls, and I highly recommend checking out the view from her perspective with the volume turned up!

Joe took this slow motion video that turned out pretty awesome too.

At this point there was much discussion on whether or not we should get a hotel for the night versus a campground or sleeping in the van. It was kind of late to find a campground since we didn't have a reservation and were running out of daylight to set up the tent. We did a lot of searching for hotels around our route, but in the end decided to save the $100+ and continue driving onward, stopping to "boondock" again somewhere along the way.

The kids were a little disappointed in this decision, since they were hoping to swim in a hotel pool, and Mary really wanted a shower. We did, however, pacify everyone by deciding to spend money on hot dinners from restaurants, and let everyone pick what they wanted. Katy got a cheeseburger Happy Meal from McDonalds, Joe and Mary and I got Panda Express, and Joey and Lily wanted food from the Walmart hot deli counter. We pulled into Walmart and unfortunately it was so late in the day that the deli counter was shut down and cleaned up for the night. However, luck was with us, and close to the registers they had bagged up all the deli counter leftovers and marked them 50% off. Joey and Lily were thrilled. We ended up spending about $30 on food for everyone, and we all had leftovers for lunch the next day too.

While we were at Walmart we also picked up some warmer sleeping bags, because we were afraid that in our upcoming stays in North Cascades National Park and Glacier National Park it would be even colder at night than it had been at Yellowstone. We also took some time to get everyone ready for sleeping in the van, and when we finally pulled out of Twin Falls, ID it was almost 10pm. Joe has been an amazing driver on this trip, and soldiered on again for another two hours before we decided to pull in at a rest stop for the night. This time we tried a new arrangement with Katy in the hammock, Lily on one of the benches, and Joey on the floor. Mary and Dad ended up sleeping in the bed and I slept on the bed across the front seats. Joey said he liked the floor better than the hammock or the bench, and Katy loves the hammock. Lily prefers the bench. I thought the front seat bed was okay, but I prefer the big bed in the back, and Mary likes the front seat sleeping spot. I'm sure that as the kids grow older preferences will change and we'll have to make adaptations - one thing that is definitely on our list is a roof top tent like this one to add more sleeping space for bigger people.

It was almost 12:30am when Joe and I finally settled in for sleeping for the night. Total miles traveled today: 528. Total miles traveled on the trip so far: 2193.