Jellystone National Park

When we all went to Montana for the Fourth of July, we spent two days in Yellowstone and drove through Yellowstone on the way home.

It was absolutely amazing! Dylan and I had driven through Yellowstone when we did our big road trip in August 2009 and we drove 6,000 miles in ten days. We came in the North Gate, got hot chocolate at the Old Faithful Lodge, and camped on the way towards the South entrance. It was freezing since it snowed on the other side of the mountains where we were. It was a great little drive, and I always looked forward to coming back to visit.

This time I was able to see a lot more of the park and really appreciate why it is a National Park.

The first day we went in was Vander, my parents and I. I was the only one who had been at all, so it was pretty much a new experience for all of us.

I took most of my pictures from the car, since Yellowstone involves a lot of driving and since we were just checking out the place the first time. This really wasn't a issue since I had my DSLR with me and my zoom lens. When people would stop to take picture of animals, we would drive on by and I swear my pictures had to be better than most of the people stopped.

We did stop to watch Old Faithful.

Then we drove over to the Lake and got out of the car for a couple of minutes.

We went back on Friday with Dylan, Brittany and Brandon and actually spent more time out of the car. One of our first stops was the Norris Geyser Basin. It was so amazing! It definitely made me appreciate the unique beauty of Yellowstone.

We saw a moose!

We had tried a hike to see the canyon water falls but it was raining and then started hailing, so we turned back. We did stop at Gibbon Falls though.

We saw a large elk heard on the way out of the park that day:

Our final visit to Yellowstone during our trip to Big Sky was on the drive back home, we decided to drive through the park and through Jackson Hole, which gave us a chance to see the Grand Tetons!

On our drive through Yellowstone, while everyone was stopped for a buffalo, we saw what we thought was a wolf, but may actually have been a coyote, but cool none-the-less.

The Grand Tetons were AMAZING! I had seen then briefly before when Dylan and I drove through, but since we didn't go to Jackson and it was cloudy that morning we didn't get to see much of them. This time I took over 200 pictures...

I would still love another chance to go back, I know we will. I would love to do more hiking next time and definitely have a day to spend in Grand Teton!

Visiting all of the National Parks is on my bucket list, so there are a lot of other places to visit too.