Yellowstone and beyond...

I have always loved road trips. The first official road trip I can remember was when I was 4. Mom packed me, Dave, Melissa, James and Ben into the station wagon and we headed West. We hit up Yellowstone, Disney Land, Tijuana, and even picked up a turtle in Nebraska. I can't tell you for sure every where we went, I only remember two things from that trip. 1) Prairie dogs at Yellowstone and 2) how darn hard it is to get Chip and Dale at Disney Land to sit still for 2 seconds to take a picture.

So given my love for road trips, I try my best to never pass one up. For the past summer Tom and I have been planning a trip, we weren't sure where we would go, but we knew it had to be fun. We took out our computers and simply estimated how far we thought we could drive and then we got out a calendar and determined how many days we thought we could get away from work. We landed on a trip to Yellowstone!

We departed MN around 5-6 on Wednesday afternoon. We arrived Fargo some where around 9-10. We ate at Granite City until around 10-11. We then drove through the night across North Dakota and into Montana. By dawn we had arrived in Red Lodge, which we viewed as our gateway to Yellowstone - the final city before we road the Bear Tooth Highway into Yellowstone. So to start the day off we and to take a break from our non-stop driving we stopped at a grocery store for some food. While there we stretched, brushed our teeth, got some food and were told the Bear Tooth Highway had been closed overnight due to 'weather'. Not willing to be stopped or to turn around and head towards an alternative route into Yellowstone we drove on (even past road closed ahead signs). Thankfully the road in Montana was not closed. We did however hit the Wyoming border to find it closed. There were however quite a few other cars waiting and informed us that the snow plow was plowing the road out. So we played around in the mountains for a while.

After we got though we were finally in Yellowstone, the Bear Tooth Highway provided us with some amazing views. Then once in the park we visited Mammoth Hot Springs and were able to find a few wildlife along the way.

On our second day in Yellowstone we visited the popular Geysers. Being stubborn and wanting to see something besides Old Faithful blow we waited 2 hours in the sun to watch the Grand Geyser (which goes longer and higher than Old Faithful) blow. It was well worth it, also while waiting we were able to see Old Faithful blow twice ....in the distance. :)

Day 3 was in the Grand Tetons. We had an awesome time stopping to take pictures, hiking and enjoying the mountain air. We however did not have a great time finding a campsite, so that was a tad stressful - but in the end we were able to secure a site for the evening.

Day 4 I woke everyone up at 5:30 so we could be on the road by 6 so we could then hike to a lake in hopes of seeing moose early in the morning at the lake. We did not see any moose at the lake but we saw at least 3-4 herds of Elk along the way. Once done looking for animals we at some flap jacks and then headed East.

We drove all day and we stopped to see Devil's tower - no encounters of the third kind :(. And by 1am we made it to the Johnson farm near Madison.

That about sums up the trip, enjoy the pics!