Today started off much different than the day before (waking up in a Walmart parking lot). Scott got up at 3 AM and woke me up to come out and look at the stars. We are way off the beaten path here in Idaho; no city lights to diminish our view. It was spectacular. We could see the Milky Way, which I have never seen in person. It was unreal. After looking at the stars for a few minutes, I started paying attention to my surroundings more. Meaning, the sounds of coyotes all around us! Now, they weren’t close to us by any means (that we know of!), but if you’ve never heard coyotes howling and yipping all around you in the middle of the night, you can’t fathom what I’m talking about. It was so surreal! We quickly hustled back inside!

On our last post, I mentioned Henrys Lake State Park, which is the place we stayed in Idaho to visit Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons. This campground is seriously amazing! We are surrounded by mountains, as well as being right next to a lake! The campsites are gravel and have really nice picnic tables and a fire pit, plus water and electricity! They also have showers- for anyone who has been camping like us before, you know how small camper showers are! It was so nice to take a long, hot shower and not worry about filling our gray tank! This campground is also about a 20 minute drive outside of Yellowstone, which is the perfect location! Close enough to get there when we wanted, but far away enough that we didn’t feel consumed by the madness that is Yellowstone. We cannot recommend Henrys Lake State Park enough! We would love to stay here much longer, and definitely plan on returning!

Anyway, back to our morning. We woke up, cooked breakfast outside, and had a nice long chat with one of our neighbors. Ray is an older gentleman, camping with his wife of nearly 53 years! We chatted about our trip, he showed us his wedding photo, and he gave us some marriage advice he has learned over the years. My personal favorite was when he told Scott that he might be the captain of the ship, but I am the admiral of the fleet! 🙂  (Scott wasn’t as amused by this as I was!). Ray gave us some advice on Yellowstone, as he used to be a tour guide there. It was nice to be surrounded by people who are doing exactly what we are, and who love the outdoors and nature as much as we do!

We headed out after breakfast. We had originally planned on going through Yellowstone to get to the Grand Teton National Park, but the GPS said it would add 1.5 hours to our trip (traffic? Who knows) I made the split decision that we should head around the other way and enter the Grand Tetons on the south side of the park. This proved to be an awesome decision, as we saw the MOST amazing view of the Tetons, and there weren’t many people on the roads in that area. Scott drove, and was a nervous wreck driving the Teton Mountain Pass- in his defense, it was a 10% grade!

While in the Grand Teton National Park, we hiked to the Hidden Falls around Jenny Lake. This was a gorgeous hike with incredible views of the mountains and Jenny Lake. We could have taken a ferry shuttle across the lake to get where we wanted, but what’s the fun in that? Scott is still not feeling the best, but it’s hard for me to hold him back! On our hike, we met several groups of people from Ohio, which was a cool nod to our home state! The Hidden Falls was a really cool hike, about 5 miles round trip. Highly recommended if you are visiting the area! Here are a few pictures of our hike! (ignore any that look like Scott is dying- he was mostly fine! We did forget our bear spray though, so luckily no bear encounters!)

On our way back from the Grand Tetons, we took the main road that connects Grand Teton National Park to Yellowstone; John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway. We stopped at a few places. Our first stop was Keplar Cascades, short stop but cool waterfall views. We then steeled ourselves to get ready to see Old Faithful. We had been dreading this, as it is generally packed full of people. However, the day was rainy, it was a little later in the evening, and we lucked out. There weren’t many people at all! It was also crazy because we got there and only waited 10ish minutes before it went off! What luck!

Our last stop on the way back to the campgrounds was at the Grand Prismatic Spring. We had both been crazy looking forward to seeing this. We got to the sight, and were very disappointed! The boardwalk is almost at level with the spring, so you can’t really see anything! A couple near us told us there was a passage behind the spring where you could get above it. We tried finding it, but ultimately failed. We decided to call it quits and head back home.

We’ve really been hoping to see a moose, ever since our vacation last summer to Maine. Every time we are in the car, we keep our eyes peeled. On our way home, I was extremely convinced that I had seen one and made Scott pull over. While it wasn’t a moose, it was an elk which we had not seen yet! We will keep looking out for moose and hopefully see one sometime on our vacation!

I feel like our posts are sometimes long, but we honestly have been doing so much on our trip! Our blog is only telling part of the story- otherwise you would be reading forever! Our hope is that our blog gets you excited to come out and explore our country’s National Park system, and hopefully fall in love with it as well!