Yellowstone & Grand Teton

Fellow readers, I'm so sorry to be extremely delayed with these last blog posts! It's hard to believe it's been a month since I've been back. I'll try to finish up these last remaining posts soon, thanks for sticking with me!

On my way from Kalispell, Montana to Driggs, Idaho I was mostly driving through wildfires. Being an east coaster, I've never experienced anything like this before. It was quite eerie driving for hundreds of miles and seeing vague outlines of mountains that I'm sure were beautiful, but all I could really make out was smoke. Driggs is a little town of about 1,200 people which at the time I thought was tiny but didn't realize how large it would be compared to where I drove through and stayed next. Driggs is surrounded by mountains which I unfortunately wasn't able to see do to the bad air quality. The sun and sky had a light pink look to it, which isn't normal. The only real positive from these wildfires was the spectacularly neon pink sunsets, have never seen anything quite like it before. Driggs is about 2 hours outside of Yellowstone and an hour outside of Grand Teton National Park. I wish I had cut my stay in Driggs short and stayed closer to Yellowstone because after driving as long as I had, being in the car for 2+ hours before I actually got to the park, was longer than I wanted. But all that aside, Yellowstone was stunning and I'm so glad I adventured for the day. Yellowstone reminded me a lot of Iceland and I loved seeing all the geysers, geothermal pools, hot springs, Old Faithful, bubbling mud/clay pits and all doing this while walking over the largest super-volcano on the continent, was really cool. The wildfire smoke just added to the other worldliness of this special place.

I went to Grand Teton two days, my first day was pretty smoky but quite atmospheric, which stopped me in my tracks. I enjoyed a nice and easy hike around one of the lakes which was beautiful and I can only imagine the greater beauty on clearer days. My second day in the park was slightly clearer and the highlight was getting to see many wild creatures, lots of bears and bison and the antler of a moose! Grand Teton is magnificent and it wasn't until I was driving out of Wyoming the following day when it was the most clear, where I was able to see the sprawling grandeur of these Rockies. I can't wait to come back to Wyoming and experience it all again!

Yellowstone National Park 

Grand Teton National Park