Yellowstone 2010

Becky and I recently drove up to Idaho to meet up with our friend Mike and go on a fun little weekend excursion to the one and only Yellowstone. We drove up to Rexburg and got there just in time to go to the midnight showing of Inception, and oh my goodness I loved it! Totally mind blowing. We felt kind of weird in little Rexburg, kind of like it wasn't real life, its an odd feeling to explain but both me and Becky felt that way and we stayed up late talking about it in the living room of some random girls apartment that Mike had arranged for us to sleep in haha. The next morning Mike made us homemade waffles on his trusty waffle iron, they were delicious and an excellent way to start out our Yellowstone vacation. After breakfast we loaded up Mike's trusty truck and made the hour and a half drive to the park. Before entering the park we decided to bum around West Yellowstone Town for a little bit, we did some excellent window shopping and stopped to have lunch at Pete's Pizza becuase it was Becky's birthday and she always eats pizza on her birthday becuase she doesn't like cake.

Mike had so much fun shopping in Yellowstone Town, you can see it in his face

We didn't know what state Yellowstone was in so we were surprised to find that we were in Montana, we would get another shock when we actually entered the park ...

When we finally made it into the park we spent the entire day looking for campsites to spend the next two days in, as it ended up we could only find one site, and that was for the next night ... But we had a good time riding in the truck with the windows down and making friends with the crazy construction dude that seemed to like to talk to us more then anyone else, he was honestly hilarious. We also stopped by the ranger musuem which was actually very interesting, Mike wants to become a forest ranger so he was excited to talk to the ranger lady that was in charge of the museum, she talked his little ear off while Becky and I went off and took lots of pictures of ourselves.

This is Harry Yount, he was the first national park ranger EVER! Younts peak located at the head of the Yellowstone river, was named in his honor, pretty neat. He resigned after one year because the job was too intense, I can only imagine what that job would have been like in 1880.

After a long day of driving around the park we went back to Yellowstone town to have a birthday dinner for Becky, we ate at the Bear Claw or Wolf Tooth or something of that manner, it was a cute lookin BBQ place right in the middle of main street. Then we drove half an hour outside of town and met up with Todd, Mike's roommate who we met when they came down for the 4th of July and their two friends Kara and Shelby. Shelby was nice enough to let us spend the night at her cute little cabin thank goodness since everyone else in the world decided to go camping in Yellowstone on the same weekend as us! It was fun! we had a campfire and played cards then we went down to the dock and looked up at the gorgeous star filled sky. That is one thing I love about camping, you can see so many more stars out in the wilderness, and they were all reflected in the lake, so when I stood out in the middle of the dock I felt like I was surrounded by a million stars, kind of like when you are riding space mountain, but much prettier.

This is the only picture I have at the cabin and I made Becky take it 5 seconds after we woke up, but I wanted to remember our fun night at the cabin! We all slept very well, in fact a little too well seeing as I didn't stir until 1 pm!!! That is just unheard of for me! I never sleep past noon! By that time most everyone else was up, dressed, packed and all ready to go so Becky and I were racing around trying to get ready to go back into the park. Todd and Kara stayed and partied with us which made the truck quite cozy with all five of us packed in there, but it was fun. We saw so much wild life today! We saw tons of elk and bison which is always so exciting!

Since I was the only one who had been to Yellowstone before, which was only once last year when I went with Nick's UVU class (click HERE and HERE to see that post) I picked out the coolest sites that I had seen to show to the rest of the crew. The first stop was the upper falls in canyon village, they are huge falls which are pretty impressive.

Becky and I went exploring and found a cool little place under the bridge to go climbing and get closer to the water when the others found us they were jealous of our cool adventure and came to join us.

On our way to stop number two we found this guy just chillin in the wild flowers!! super neat!

Stop number two = the lower falls and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone! Such a beautiful place! Everyone was stunned! I love seeing people get excited about things you tell them about and share with them, it kind of made me want to be a teacher even more haha.

We asked this cute young mom to take a picture of our group and her little boy wanted to be in our picture sooo bad so I told him to come on in, he was so happy to be a part of it, and he was so adorable plus we love having random people in our pictures, it documents the people we meet in our travels as well as creates funny memories.

Stop number three = Old Faithful and the upper geyser basin. We got there at the most beautiful time of day when the sun is getting ready to set and gives off the most gorgeous golden light, I had such a fun time taking pictures and experimenting with lens flairs and such. It was so fun and almost relaxing, meandering through the boardwalks looking at all the amazing natural sites.

After stop number three we decided to call it a day and started making our way to our campsite in Madison. The sunset was gorgeous!

Tonight after a hot dog dinner we made over our campfire and a couple of games of egyptian rat screw we all explored a meadow that was close to our campsite and ended by laying on the benches at an outdoor amphitheater to once again gaze at the beautiful stars.

Today we decided to have each meal in a different state as we made our way back to our home in provo. Here we are documenting our breakfast in Wyoming (we forgot to buy breakfast food at the store, so this was all we could do for breakfast ...) Then our last stop in the park, which is my favorite, I saved the best for last ... the grand prismatic spring on the middle geyser basin, yep everyone was amazed and I felt awesome.

Don't worry he isn't flipping of the camera he is just being crazy

Then we reluctantly said farewell to beautiful Yellowstone and headed to town for lunch in Montana, we decided Pete's Pizza was our best bet so we went back and split a yummy pizza before making the drive back to Rexburg.

When we finally made it back to Idaho I was so ready to NOT be in a car anymore so we relaxed for a little while and felt what it was like to live in Rexburg for a few hours, which made us super grateful that we live in provo. Then we needed to have dinner in Idaho so we headed to one of the two restaurants that little town has, Applebees. I felt the serious need for some healthy food so I got a huge salad full of leafy greens, and here is our super nasty picture of dinner in Idaho after not showering for like four days.

After dinner we had to say goodbye to our good friends Mike and Todd which was sad, I seriously hate goodbyes and begin our adventure back to Provo. We decided that the drive from Provo to Rexburg is super pretty unlike the drive from Provo to California ... this is an example of what I am talking about.