Road Trip Out West: Yellowstone and the Tetons

So here is a tale of 7 friends taking a massive road trip out West...on their way the did encounter wild moose at their campsites (watchout...they do charge) and bear blocks (be aware if a bear is near the road in Yellowstone you will also meet long lines of cars due to the crazy people that get out of their cars to take pictures...who would do something like that?!?).

Around 6 o'clock in the evening one buggy June night 7 of us piled in 2 cars to take our road trip that accumulated over 4000 miles in 10 days. We saw great sights, had many laughs and ate a lot of PB and J sandwiches. We drove straight through that first night and made it to the gates of Yellowstone around 4 pm the next day (note how awake Kelly and I look in the above picture).This was our first sightseeing stop in Montana overlooking the Bear Tooth Mountains...looking a little sleepy, but we are excited to be getting somewhere.

We slept in some really rustic cabins at Lake Yellowstone. It was nice to have a bed none of us had seen one in about 36 hours. One of the funnier moments at Lake Yellowstone was Sunday morning when Amy and I were having some quiet time down by the water. Suddenly out of nowhere this bus full of Asian tourists pulled up creating such a rustic. Instead of getting up and leaving the fuss of picture taking and Asian jokes, Amy and I both stayed to witness the madness. So funny...and it made me miss Heejung back in Madison!

We Made it to Old Faithful the next morning. We walked all the way to the Morning Glory Hot Spring. Then we got back in the car and headed down to the Tetons. We had a great dinner at Signal Mountain Lodge and then I purposefully ran into some UGA buddies at the Jackson Hole grocery store. That night we camped out in the Gros Ventre camping site. It got really chilly. All of us were ready for a full day of hiking and white water rafting.

Above are some of the sights we encountered on our hike around Jenny Lake. It was so great to have Granger join us for the hike and the rafting later that day. She was in training for her upcoming Colorado backpacking trip.

Rafting was so much fun. We were pushing it getting there because we had to make it to the top of Inspiration Point. However, we got to the outpost before the bus left. Many of us will never forget the look on Nate's face when he was told that he would start off "riding the bull" on the front of the raft. The politician of the group took to the front well and managed to stay in the raft.

The water was running pretty fast that day. So the trip down the river took about 2 hours. It was a big raft so everyone from the trip was able to fit in one raft. We also had a nice family of four from California and our guide. It was a beautiful day out on the water...nothing like being on a river in the middle of the mountains.

After everyone was done rafting, we were all hungry. We went with Megan and Granger and a few other Jackson transplants to Merry Pigglets for a hearty mexican meal. We also got to watch a little bit of the Dawgs play in some of the college world series baseball finals while we waited for our food.

Megan was nice enough to let us "campout" in her place that night. We got up before 7 the next morning to get on the road up to Glacier National Park.