Yellowstone

Oh this heavenly, magical dream of a winter wonderland vacation. It was everything I hoped for and more. Tanner gave it to me for Christmas and I was so excited about it. And then it finally came and it was soooo flipping fun and amazing and awesome and filling of the soul :) Tanner did good. So good. 

We left after we took Harvey to breakfast for his birthday and went to Greta's dance. She was supposed to have a little Valentine's Day dance for us. When we peeked in through the curtain, she was dancing around really cute. But when it came time to actually do it, she FROZE. Just like her dance recital. Oh well. There will be a video in the misc February blog for your viewing enjoyment.

Roads were pretty good until we got just past Ashton. We saw a bobcat in the trees on the side of the road. That was cool. We had stopped in Rexburg at Cafe Rio for lunch. We listened to a lot of episodes of the Cold podcast on the way up too. Pretty fascinating and disturbing. 

I couldn't believe how much snow there was in West Yellowstone when we got there!

Our fancy hotel at the 3 Bears Motel. It was cozy and lovely except for the hard bed.

We got unpacked and relaxed for a bit and then went and picked up our snowmobiling gear and got a free shirt at the gift shop :) Then we walked a couple blocks to a pizza place that was really good. We stopped at a grocery store for a few snacks for snowmobiling. Fun first day!

The next morning we had a little orientation about the day and headed out from the hotel with our group into Yellowstone about 9am. It was so fun! Yellowstone blanketed in snow was AMAZING! It was serene and quiet and beautiful! Right after we got into the park we saw this little coyote wander right by us. So fun!

Our guide was named Donald Mckenzie. He was great. Told us lots of history about the park and such. We stopped pretty early on for some stories and photo ops.

First bison viewing.

We took lots of stops. Right after the fork in the road to either go to mammoth or old faithful, there was a little warming hut and bathrooms we stopped at for a bit. Then we drove on the little side road to check out Firehole Falls. Soooo pretty!

More bison.

We actually ended up riding through 4-5 herds of bison on the way to Old Faithful. It was a little nervous. They are sooo huge and they were SO close. And he told us about a group this winter that had a bison tip over a sled that someone was sitting on...so that didn't help. Most of the time they just minded there own business and walked next to us. A few of the times there were some weaving across the road and some kind of rambunctious and sort of aggressive to each other. That was the last group we rode through and definitely got the heart beat going. I couldn't take any pictures of the ones on the road because we couldn't stop and I couldn't picture and drive the sled, so a nice lady was kind enough to send me a few she took while riding in back of her husband.

We made it to Old Faithful. We had lunch at one of the restaurants that was open. And then wandered over to the geyser and had front row seats. There were maybe 50 people there. It was so cool.

Then we drove up the road a little more to these falls, which now I can't remember the name. But they were awesome.

Then he took us up a little further to the continental divide. Apparently there's a little lake there that has outlets that go out East and West, but end up feeding into rivers opposite of the side they go out of. Kind of an anomaly of the continental divide. The weather was so great. Alternated between cloudy and sunny. And some wind. But I never got cold, which is what I was afraid of. My face stayed warm and so did fingers (for the most part), toes and body.

We were going to stop at this lower geyser basin on the way in but it was too windy which made for too cold of a wind chill for them to let us stop and walk around. I was pretty bummed, but luckily on the way back the wind had died down so we got to wander around the path, which was really cool.

The trees near these hot pots look so cool because all the steam comes off and then freezes on the branches and stuff.

One final stop to take some pictures of some swans.

It was SUCH a fun day! So awesome. LOVED it! We got back around 5 ish. Dropped off the sleds and went and changed etc and then headed out to dinner. I can't remember where we ate but we got Elk ravioli that was SOOOO good. Wowsers.

Also as part of our package we got tickets to the movie theater in town. They were showing The Upside, which we both LOVED. Really good and funny.
The next morning we got upgraded mountain sleds. It had snowed SO much over the night and was going strong all day long. It was easily over 2 feet of snow. There are TONS of trails all around West Yellowstone and Island Park that all connect and they get groomed sporadically. But since the snow was so intense, a lot of them were powder and you couldn't really tell where they were going. We ended up trying one trail but couldn't see the trail and ended up getting stuck in tons of powder. After that, we decided we would just stick to trails that people had ridden on. It was more fun riding than getting us unstuck :)

There was so much snow! It was incredible. I could see a sunny day with endless options of groomed trails and visibility being fun, but there was something SOOO magical and peaceful and even eerie about the day. We passed by plenty of people but there were lots of times when we were all by ourselves and it just felt like we were the last people on earth. Or we were on some different planet. It's hard to describe. But it was really cool. And so much fun. There were a few straightaways on the trails where we could really get going. We got up past 50 several times and it was a blast. We stopped in Island Park for lunch and then made our way back up to West Yellowstone and did a loop a couple of times north of town.

Then we had to bring them back. Sad. We had such a great time.

Look how much snow!! The back of his truck was completely packed full.

Swimming pool area.

We had dinner that night in the lodge restaurant because again, part of the package included a free dinner. The appetizer of chili cheese fries was the best. I got filet mignon and wasn't that impressed.

Here are some pics from the home front. My mom watched them Monday and most of Tuesday and then Nat had them the rest of the time. We tried face timing a few times but they never were that interested. I guess that's a good sign that they were having a great time! We got delayed leaving the next morning because the roads had been closed from snow. So we were about 3 hrs later than we thought, but luckily they opened up right before we had to pay for an extra night and we didn't get stuck there! I'm sure Nat was pretty happy about that too :) Although Greta wasn't. She was so mad to have to leave. She didn't miss me she said and said she didn't love me and she wanted to stay with Nat. And she screamed the whole way home. That was a nice welcome home. 

But really - we did have so much fun (and Greta liked me again the next day) and we were so grateful to family who helped make it possible!