Where Are The Mooses?

Yellowstone 2013

Like I've said before, we have the best neighbors.  Once I was pretty much done with school we were able to hang out a lot more and try to complete our list of to-do's before they all left for Alaska (Christie, Trevor and my Bradley are all going to Alaska).  We had made our list extremely long, and we decided we had to make it to Yellowstone.  Christie has never been, and for the rest of us it had been many many years since we'd been.  Once we figured out the weekend, we were all so excited.  We went the weekend after I graduated (June 21-23) so it was nice to fully enjoy what I was doing.  We left after all of us got off work on Friday and headed north.

and we're off!

All we really had planned was that we were going to Yellowstone...and...yep that's about it.  We didn't pack food (we wanted to get that later), and we didn't really have a set plan for where we were going to stay.  Those kinds of road trips are the best right?   On our way we passed Fort Hall Casino that was in the Indian Reservation.  If you only knew how addicted my friends were, then you would understand how necessary it was for us to stop.  It ended up being really fun and Brad and I came out with 3 dollars up.  Woo.  We didn't stay long because my friends are amazing and knew how not-so-great it is for my lungs to be surrounded by smoke like that.  I'm pretty lucky to have such great people in my life.

 Well, we made it to just outside of the park right before 10:00.  Having no idea if there was another campsite up ahead, we decided we'd better check the one out that we had just passed.  They had only a few more spots open and they informed us that most of the campgrounds closed at 10:00, so we were feelin' pretty lucky that we made it and got a spot.  The only food that we found was pizza...that was a little more expensive than we had liked. haha.  The boys didn't notice how much it was till it was already made. oops!  It made for a good laugh!

We pretty much ate, set up our tents, and went to sleep.  Oh, I can't forget that we played a few rounds of Trump, which now we've got the Shelton's hooked on.  Wait, I meant that we just have Christie hooked on.  It's great for me though because that is my favorite card game.  It rained all through the night, and both our tents stayed strong.  We woke up pretty early, packed up, and headed out for the day.

Saturday

our site.  we didn't really get to see it till that next morning, and it was actually really cool!

at our campsite! 

And the trip begins. 

On Saturday it rained on and off on us most of the day, but it was still so pretty!  It made everything look so green.  Christie's number one thing she really wanted to see was a Moose.  Unfortunately that was pretty much the only think we didn't see.  But it made for some funny jokes.  Trevor hated when me and Christie called them mooses or meese, so of course we did it constantly just to bother him.  We had so many jokes and laughs during the whole trip!  It was so fun to go with them!

This was the only time we saw bears...which we could only see them through the binoculars, but hey we saw them right?  Also, Christie holding the muffins that me and her realllly liked! haha 

Exploring

There are quite a few pictures of just these three. haha I carried the camera most of the time!

Gibbons Falls

A picture I took from my phone. It turned out pretty cool.

ya...our husbands struggle sometimes

Christie's First Encounter With The Geysers In Yellowstone

Virginia Cascades
This place was one of Trevor's favorites ;)

You can't tell from the picture, but it's a big waterfall!

Our First Buffalo
We later learned that would be what we saw the most of!  They are everywhere!

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone
So amazing!  Pictures don't do it justice!

The Brink of the Lower Falls

Those three again...haha

Hayden Valley

Exploring by the Yellowstone River

Dragon's Breath and the Mud Pots
So we kind of got bored of Geysers after about the first 100 we saw, so pictures kind of slow down of them from now on haha.

Buffalo!

Before we found a place to camp for the night, we saw Fishing Bridge and Yellowstone Lake.  It was pouring rain at that time, so we didn't get out to look at it and take pictures!  We were all so tired, and we just wanted to find a place to set up camp, eat dinner and hang out.  We ended up staying at Grant Village cause they had a few sites left.  We had picked up stuff to make for dinner earlier that day, so as soon as camp was set up we made tin foil dinners, which were amazing because we were starving.  Then, we hung out by the lake for a little bit.  We sat around the fire until it starting pouring on us, and Christie and I took cover in our tents while the boys took care of the fire.  Then we played Trump again, and listed to our "giggling" neighbors all night.  We had two boys staying in the site next to us that just giggled all night, it was funny till we really wanted to just sleep haha.

Walking across the logs to the sandbar.  No one else followed so I just had to come back...they were all too scared ;) 

The trail from camp to the lake

Sunday

The last thing we had on our agenda that we wanted to see, apart from Christie seeing a moose, was Old Faithful of course!  We woke up early, and Christie and I got free showers, so we took advantage of that, and then we headed out.  The next time Old Faithful was supposed to be going off was just about how long it would take us to drive there from where we camped.  So we had to hurry.  On our way there was a couple cars stopped ahead of us, which usually means that there is some kind of animal.  We assumed it was like buffalo or something, but to our suprise we saw an elk.  Our thoughts were along the line of, "Oh, cool an elk, but lets keep going to Old Faithful."  So Brad kept driving past the cars, and just as he did a whole family of elk ran from the trees across the road.  I had my camera out just in time, but we couldn't help but laugh because we knew we had to of been in all those other peoples pictures since we had just pulled in front of them.  Brad hurried and drove away, and we all just laughed!  At least we got some pictures, right? :)

Old Faithful

There was a little bit more of Yellowstone we didn't make it to, but if we would have kept going we would have done a lot of back tracking.  We also really wanted to make it to Jackson Hole before it got too late, so from Old Faithful we headed that way.  On the way we still had the opportunity of see a lot of the park before we were all the way out.

Last View of Yellowstone Lake

Lewis Lake
We stopped here for lunch.  We were all pretty hungry, and needed some food in us before Jackson, so we stopped at a little campground site that wasn't being used and ate lunch there.

they really liked this log...they are strange.

You can't really see it, but I caught a frog!

A little pond.  My husband disappeared at this moment for a while so we all just skipped rocks haha 

We tried cartwheels!

My favorite picture of them.  She accidently spilled his dew, so he's a little angry and she's just dying of laughter! haha 

Lewis Falls

Leaving Yellowstone and getting to the Grand Teton
We did things a little backwards and got a picture with the Yellowstone sign as we left.  It's okay, at least we got one right?

Christie searching for mooses

The Tetons!

Moose Crossing
When we were getting pretty close to Jackson, we passed a big sign that was flashing and said,"Caution, possible moose crossing for the next 10-15 miles."  We all got so stoked because we thought for sure we would see one.  We looked good and hard for those miles, and when we realized we had probably drove a while, Trevor told Brad to pull over at a little area where we could search.  He was dedicated to let his wife see a dang moose.  So we looked, and looked, and looked and still...nothing.

I'm thinking we were making weird animals noises at this moment.

Jackson Hole
We stayed in Jackson for a few hours.  Enough to walk around town and eat some lunch...again.  The boys were starving.

waitin on us girls! They're having so much fun haha

The closest thing we got to a moose. 

haha...twins

We headed home after Jackson.  We stopped at some little store on the way, got some goodies and we were off.  I can't leave out this picture of Trevor.  We were stopped in the middle of nowhere because he spotted a fox and was determined to get it.  Haha it made us all laugh.

Overall, Yellowstone and Jackson treated us well.  We had a blast with our friends!  We couldn't be more grateful to have friends that enjoy doing the same things we like.  We didn't have much planned, and we all just went with the flow with everything.  That made it so fun!

Next stop is Alaska for us all...