Another long-form vacation recap. Now that we’re back in 100-degree blazing temps, it’s hard to believe I spent a slice of this summer in the Wyoming mountains.
Preparation
I’ve been wanting to go on some sort of trip like this ever since I cancelled on our Texas 4000 seniors camping trip, which would have gone through parks in Colorado, Utah, and California. Out of all the places we would have biked through this summer, I was most excited to go through Glacier and Banff NP. Canada’s borders are still closed, but I thought we could still go up north to see some beautiful lakes and mountains. I decided that, for the first time in my life, I would plan out our day-by-day schedule and budget for the whole trip. No more lounging around and waiting for others to tell me where to go. Time to get deep into spreadsheets.
Glacier NP was originally my must-see on this trip, but it turns out that the long drive from Texas would only leave a day or two for us to explore. We’d spend more time driving than vacationing. I tried to make the itinerary work, but ultimately had to cut it out. I decided we’d take 10 days to visit Yellowstone and Grand Teton. Initially, Dad said he couldn’t make it, but thankfully he managed to take a week off work.
7.24
Day 1. 7.5 hours of driving. I mostly packed the morning of, and we left at 10am. We brought lots of noodles and PB&J. Thank God for Mom. I would have just planned to binge on fast food. I took the first leg of driving up to Santa Anna, where we ate lunch at a tiny diner called Double H Family Dining with very fast service. (I was so impressed I favorited it on Google Maps). We stayed at a Motel 6 in Amarillo right off the highway. It was nicer than I had expected it to be. I did my splits stretches on a towel. Mom made noodle soup for dinner in our slow cooker pot, as she would for most nights on the trip.
7.25
6.5 hours of driving. We ate at iHOP for breakfast. It was overwhelming to eat out for the past two days. The last time we had gone to a restaurant was for Mom’s birthday lunch at Perry’s. We went through New Mexico and drove to Denver. We didn’t stop for lunch, not sure why. When we got to Denver, we walked around downtown and through a gorgeous outdoor mall area. Dad gave a busker a dollar. At the hotel, we ordered Chinese takeout. The pillows were so fluffy.
7.26
Long day. 10 hours of driving to West Yellowstone. At this point, the car windshield was disgusting and smeared with streaks of insect carcasses. The front bumper was worse. No amount of windshield wiper fluid could get it off. As we drove out of Colorado and into Wyoming, the mountains turned into flat plateaus that Jeffrey found boring. I thought they were beautiful. We drove through a large stretch of land that was the Wind River reservation. It was dry and dusty. Then, the landscape turned into forests. We drove through Grand Teton and into Yellowstone. We went to wait at Old Faithful for about an hour, and Mom wanted to see it erupt very badly. The rest of us were very tired and bullied her into leaving. We got to our hotel, Stage Coach Inn, in West Yellowstone very late. It had many taxidermied animals on display. We loved it. We went to go buy pizza in town. It was so late that I was uncomfortable, and I cried a bit and refused to eat very much. I said my stomach hurt.
7.27
Dad worked in the hotel the whole day because he had some product launch. We had free breakfast, and I gorged myself on toast and fluffy waffles. We went out to explore many little geysers at the Lower Basin. We drove through Firehole Canyon and visited Fountain Flat, where we touched the hot water coming out from the ground. We found a trail to Fairy Falls, but it didn’t indicate how long it was. We ended up hiking about 3 hours total on it. I thought it would be very chilly up here, but the sun was glaring hot and it was over 80 degrees. We were very dehydrated, dusty, and tired after hiking. The falls themselves were gorgeous though. Then we went to Old Faithful again, and arrived as soon as it finished going off. We waited there and ate leftover pizza for lunch around 4pm. Finally, after over 90 minutes of waiting, we saw it erupt. We came back to the hotel, and Dad took the car to drive around the park after his work. Mom napped for a bit because she had a headache. Jeffrey and I went to a local ice cream shop, the City Creamery. I tried their huckleberry honey and lavender ice cream. I tasted like blueberry yogurt in the best way possible.
7.28
It was a much cooler and overcast day with rain on the forecast. We went to Artist Paint Pot, which had disgusting ugly gooey pots of bubbling clay that sprayed mud. I loved it immensely. We ate lunch in the car overlooking Swan Lake. We drove to Mammoth Hot Springs. I napped a lot. Thought about how I couldn’t capture any of this in pictures. Then we drove to Lamar Valley where my dreams came true!!! We saw so many herds of bison up close. Some even walked in the road next to our car. They were fearless. And we saw TWO BEARS! One brown one, which Jeffrey and I couldn’t find for a while, and one black one which was SUPER close. Probably around 20 yards away. There was a third one that caused a traffic jam, but I didn’t see it. There was also another traffic stop because apparently people saw a wolf, but we didn’t see that either. It started raining and it was a long drive back to West Yellowstone. We got McDonald’s afterwards, and everyone in the town was in the same drive-through line. It took at least 35 minutes to place our order.
7.29
Busy day and last day in Yellowstone. We went to a gift shop, and I got a shirt with a large buffalo face on it. It was kind of scary. Mom got a mug, and Jeffrey got a shirt, and Dad got a bottle opener. We saw Norris Geyser. At that point, I was quite sick of geysers, and we took the short way through it. We stopped at Canyon and bought some food. There, I ran into four of my Texas 4000 teammates. It was a very “what are the odds?” moment. They’d been road tripping for four weeks at that point, and visited six national parks. We took a photo, but afterwards I felt very uneasy and sad. I couldn’t believe they were traveling together all this time. I couldn’t believe we had run into each other in this small spot in Yellowstone. We went to Brink of Upper Falls, which was beautiful. We also saw Mud Volcano and Dragon’s Mouth, which indeed looked very much like the steam from a sleeping dragon. We bought Death in Yellowstone. Jeffrey and I were so excited to find it, and we read passages from it the whole day. That night, we drove down to Grand Teton and found our cabin by Colter Bay. There was no service and no WiFi in the cabin – the only WiFi was by the visitor’s center. Mom and Dad both stepped out at various points to deal with work stuff. I loved our cabin. There were two large beds and one small one, which I took. There were large, sturdy dressers. Names were carved into the wood by my pillow.
7.30
First day in Grand Teton. Read the Autobiography of Red pdf I saved on my phone. Was confused by it, and wished we had service so I could look things up. We had a late start to the day, leaving at around 10. We bought bear spray for $50. We went to Jackson Lake Dam and Jenny Lake. We took the ferry across and hiked past Hidden Falls to Inspiration Point on the Cascade Canyon trail. We went a bit further, but Mom and Dad got exhausted and we doubled around to head back. It was a beautiful trail. That night, Jeffrey and I swam in Colter Bay as the sun set. The water was freezing.
7.31
Last day. I was thoroughly in love with the Tetons at this point. It was so beautiful I felt heartbroken at every new view. We hiked about 3.9 miles at Taggart Lake. I wished I had brought my swimsuit. We went to Mormon Row, Snake River, and Oxbow Bend. The sun was so bright that it was difficult to stay outside for too long. Jeffrey and I went back to swim in Colter Bay again while Mom and Dad drove out to look for animals. Water was just as cold, even though we went earlier. We had pasta for dinner and played “Presidents” for hours until we made Dad scum. We all laughed so much, and I wished we could have more and more moments like these.
8.1
We had an 11 hour drive ahead of us to Raton, New Mexico. I was dreading these next two days, but somehow they weren’t as bad as I had feared. I had Taco Bell for lunch while everyone else had McDonalds. I played the AUX for the whole morning, until the adapter stopped working. The forests turned into plateaus which turned into distant mountains. The most exciting thing about the day was FINALLY getting cell service! We had none for almost all of Wyoming. I drove us past the southern Colorado ranches and into New Mexico. Our inn for the night was quite lovely, and I had a margarita and veggie fajitas. The family next to us kept opening their door again and again, and the sound of squeaky hinges continued throughout the night.
8.2
Another 11 hours of driving back to Austin. We had a complimentary breakfast at the inn. I only drove for about 1.5 hours that day; Dad drove most of it. We lost an hour of time coming back, which made the driver tougher. We stopped for lunch in Lubbock at Chili’s, which took forever. The service was very slow. I decided we should listen to a podcast, and I put on “Crime Junkie” for the first time. We ended up listening to three or four episodes as the night when on. We got back to Austin after 9. We were exhausted. Jeffrey realized he left his track shirt in the New Mexico inn. I took a quick shower before bed. I could not believe we were here, back home, when those mountains still stood tall in Wyoming.