Yellowstone and Beyond

Yellowstone is beautiful, go see your national treasure.

 

Amazing. Family member was a Park Ranger there before they passed, wish we had made it out there to have them show us around... this looks like a future trip positively worth taking. Thanks for the pics

 

Absolutely worth taking! These are just some of the photos. You will truly be amazed. The most beautiful land I’ve ever seen. Makes you proud to be an American.

 

This was our first NP trip and we were hooked. We had five days there and three days in Grand Tetons. We were there in October and had 70° and sun to 4" of snow at the higher elevations. Absolutely beautiful. I'd also highly recommend Moose Wilson Road and the Rockefeller nature area near Grand Tetons. We've done 20+ national parks now, most recently Big Bend.

 

We had the same amount of time. Saw everything we wanted to besides a bear. I guess not seeing one is also good luck. Grand Tetons was breath taking. Hard to get a last minute reservation. Recommend seeing Jenny lake. They have a pebble beach. Great view of the range.

 

We hiked up to Jenny Lake the day we did the Rockefeller nature reserve. It was a good venture.

We saw black bears with cubs in both parks. Moose and bison herds moving to lower ground, mountain goats galore at the north entrance, and anwolf at the geysers. And elk everywhere you look. While driving through valley on the NE side I had to stop for bison in the road. He was huge and walking the center line. So close we could smell him.

Glacier and the PNW parks are next for us.

 

I made my 3rd trip to Yellowstone in July. The last one was in 2003 so it's been a while. We did a long trip leaving GA heading north through Michigan and into the UP then west across WI, MN, ND, MT and Glacier NP. Of course we took more than a week getting there and made many side trips along the way.

After 4 days in Glacier we spent 3 in Yellowstone before working our way back to GA. We were gone 20 days.

We did the east coast last summer ending up in Acadia NP in Maine. We came back through Buffalo NY to see Niagara Falls. Baxter state park was pretty cool too. We live about an hour from the southern terminus of the AT and have hiked some of it here in GA. We wanted to do the last few miles in Maine to see the northern end. But it was late May and the last segment was still closed due to snow/ice above tree line.

From where I live Colorado is where I can see/do the most for the least effort. We've done a lot of road trips there. I can leave my house and be in the middle of CO in 24 hours driving time. I've done it in 2 days and I've driven straight through by tag teaming driving/sleeping.

Yellowstone and Glacier are something you need to see, but for me that's another 2 days of driving each way. I'm glad I made another trip there, but probably won't go back.

My wife really wants to see Yosemite and some of the west coast. Alaska is hopefully in our future too.

 

We did Yosemite a few years back along with Kings / Sequoia. I would highly recommend an off peak season trip. One main road in, small conjested main park area. It wasn't bad in early October, but I wouldn't want to be there mid summer.

 

For anyone interested, this was a two week trip we for our 25th anniversary a few years ago. We actually stumbled into Baloonfest in ABQ.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...h-your-wife-for-your-25th-anniversary.740871/