I finally gotten around to writing up a description of our road to Wyoming in July and posting photos. The write up is pretty long, so I decided to add some links to photos and other goodies right at the beginning of the post but I hope you end up reading all about our trip!
I also finally got around to publishing a book on Blurb.com and am really happy with the results, so I added a link to that here also. And of course, I was not only armed with two digital cameras, but also with my trusty GPS and SPOT, so I have included detailed tracks of our backpacking trip and an overview map in Google Maps.
Hope you enjoy and maybe you’ll be inspired to go visit Yellowstone and the Tetons yourself!
Photo Album
Blurb Book
Google Map
GPS Track Log (GPX File)
Google Earth Track with Photos (KMZ File)
It only made sense that the first big roadtrip in Harvey, the Westfalia camper van, should be to
Our trip began with a late departure from
The ranger station was about to close when we finally arrived in the park and we desperately wanted to get our backcountry permit, so we could begin our backpacking early the next day. But as it turned out, fate didn’t want us to be so expedient. The nice ranger who was working the desk explained to us in her own words that she didn’t have a clue about backpacking in the park and that she was new to this job and that the guy who we would really want to talk to was not working at that station this summer. And then she proceeded to tell us that the trails that interested us in the Southern end of the park were too muddy, snowy, and flooded to consider hiking. We had really hoped to avoid the Northern part of the park, since it takes a few hours to drive from one end to the other, but it began to look like we would have no choice. We continued on to
We tried to get going early Sunday morning and wound up speaking to a wonderful ranger who echoed the fact that it was a bit early in the season to explore much of the park. After a bit of conversation, we decided on a favorite hike of his through the
We finally got started hiking around 4pm under a hot, sunny sky not far from
The following day, we got a late-ish start around 11am and finally saw a few people on the trail. There was a ranger cabin on the other side of Hellroaring Creek where a group of rangers had been staying, presumably dealing with our nemesis the bear. The trail began a detour from the creek across from our camp and began to ascend the hillsides through wide open meadows. Although beautiful, the heat from the sun, then mosquitos, then the threat of our bear-friend, and finally concern of lightning resulted in a more challenging hike than we had anticipated. This whole backpacking thing was tough! We finally stopped for a bite to eat at the highest elevation of the trail, so I took out the map to figure out where we were and still had to go. My heart skipped a beat when I realized we were in
We were sure to get an earlier start for our third day on the trail, and we quickly found ourselves at another suspension bridge that took us back across the
Once again, it was late in the day and we didn’t know where we were going to sleep, but we did know that the North entrance to the park led to
On Wednesday, July 2, we headed from Mammoth Hot Springs to the
Within a few hours, we were exploring the various hiking trails and views of the Upper and
As if we had not done enough that day, we then headed down to
On Thursday, we sadly left
On July 4th, we expected to kayak another stretch of the
It was hard to believe that on Saturday, July 5, our trip was almost over, but we still had a great day available to kayak the whitewater stretches of the Snake River downstream from
On Sunday, we finally pulled away from our camp to head back to-