Day 2 - The Badlands
Day 3 - Mt. Rushmore
Day 4 - Devils Tower
Day 5 - Old Faithful Geysers
Day 6 - Grand Canyon of Yellowstone
Day 7 - Mammoth Hot Springs and Osprey Falls
Day 8 - Grand Prismatic Spring
Day 9 - Grand Tetons - Hidden Falls
Day 10 - Whitewater Rafting and Jackson Hole, WY
This is an attempt to keep a record of the events of our 2011 vacation to the Badlands, Mt. Rushmore, Devils Tower, Yellowstone, and Grand Tetons National Park.
Day 1 - 6/25/2011 - Saturday
Started off at 6 AM. Lots of flooding this year and I-29 was closed from Rock Port, MO, all the way through Omaha, NE. So, we had to take an alternate route, 71 North, through MO up into Iowa, and then hit I-80 west to hit 29 north of Omaha. Stopped by the Corn Palace in Mitchell, SD on the way:
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| Day 1 Route |
Day 2 - 6/25/2011 - Badlands
We got up the next morning and rain was still in the area but it seemed to be clearing. We headed into the Badlands to check that out. We really loved hiking around in this area. We hiked a trail called, "The Door" but then we made our own trail.
We also hiked the Notch Trail. This was a good one, too, with a ladder to climb along the way:
The last trail we hiked here was the Cliff Shelf Nature Trail. It was a boardwalk with a nice view. We wandered a little off the trail here, too.
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| Badlands route and trails hiked |
After the storm we made it to Wall Drug.
We pulled in to our campsite pretty late and got to set up in the dark. We stayed at the Rafter J Bar campground. It's a great campground and we wish we had more time there. Awesome facilities and NO bugs! http://www.rafterj.com/
We got to see our campsite in the daytime -
We took a vote and decided to go the scenic route to Mt. Rushmore. That was a great decision! It was an awesome drive! We drove through part of Custer State Park. Here's the route from our campsite:
Here are some scenes along this route:
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| Needles Hiway - 87 |
There are a couple tunnels on Iron Mountain Road that frame Mt. Rushmore. This was very cool!
Then we made it to Mt. Rushmore!
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We hiked around the trail there, saw some close-ups of the presidents, and then took off for Devils Tower. Here's the route to Devils Tower. I think it took about 2.5 hours:
Made it to the KOA and was able to set up before dark.
Day 4 - 6/28/2011 - Devils Tower
View from our campsite:
We loved hiking up the boulder field to the base of the tower:
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After coming down we hiked around the entire tower and then headed off to Yellowstone after having lunch next to a prairie dog town.
Here's our route to Yellowstone. I thought this would take around 9.5 hours but it was closer to 11. I think it was about 95% two lane highways.
Just outside the East gate, we ran across Marty Moose crossing the road...
After entering the park, we had to hold up for a buffalo strolling down our lane.
Then we saw some mountain sheep on the side of a bluff -
And finally, a couple grey wolves in a field at dusk -
We then made it to our campground, Bridge Bay, after dark. We got our assigned campsite - Loop G, 295. We saw all the other campsites out in the open in the middle of a field, so we were a little aprehensive about what we would get. I had requested a wooded site, but there was no guarantee. When we got there, we were so excited to have an awesome, wooded site that you could not even see another campsite from! We were so grateful to God for providing this for us. After a little trouble backing in the camper, we set up and hit the sack.
Day 5 - 6/29/2011 - Old Faithful
Our first day in the park we hit the Old Faithful geyser area. Amazing sights all day.
After seeing Old Faithful go off, we hopped on our bikes and followed the highlighted path on the map above. A HUGE storm blew in around the Visitor Center and shops just as we were biking away from it. We looked back and it looked like a monsoon where we had just been but we were riding in sunshine and only felt a few drops of rain!
We parked our bikes for a while and explored more of the geysers in the area along the boardwalks where no bikes were allowed.
Our first day in the park we hit the Old Faithful geyser area. Amazing sights all day.
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| Grotto Geyser |
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| Morning Glory Pool |
After the bike ride we parked the bikes and did some shopping and got a snack. No doubt that the Hendrick Family was in the house…!
On the way back to our campground at Bridge Bay, we stopped by and saw Kepler Cascades, a pretty waterfall.After seeing that we were pretty tired and ready to be back at the campsite, but decided to make a quick stop into the West Thumb area to see what it was about. Boy, were we glad we did! There we saw our first Grizzly bear of our trip, Preacher Bear!
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We finished out the day at the campsite with a fire and some food.
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Day 6 – 6/30/2011 – Grand Canyon of Yellowstone
Today we started out early heading over to Fishing Bridge campground to do laundry and take showers. Bridge Bay does not have either of those facilities. We managed to get it all done and then head over to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River. I had read that the best day hike in Yellowstone was in that area so we didn’t want to miss that.On the way over we saw a mama grizzly crossing the road with her cub! (Tip: Always have your camera ready in Yellowstone. We didn’t have the camera ready and so got a nice shot of the woods where they ran into.)
We drove through the Hayden Valley and saw tons of buffalo.
We started at the Upper Falls lookout point and hiked Uncle Tom’s Trail.
The highlighted section of the map above is considered one of the best day hikes in Yellowstone. It has amazing views of the falls, amazing colors of the canyon walls, as well as the diversity of the gurgling mud and steam vents. It is considered a back country hike in bear territory so you need to be prepared. In fact, 6 days after we hiked this loop a man was killed by a female grizzly protecting her cubs a little over 1/4 of a mile from where we had been. That was on the Wapiti Lake Trail and is noted with a red X on the map.
 |  At the bottom of 328 steps |
Starting the hike from Uncle Tom’s Trail and heading to Artist’s Point.
Hiking on the South Rim Trail towards Artist’s Point. Spectacular colors in the canyon walls.
Artist’s Point. One of the most spectacular, scenic spots in the country.
Zoomed in shot of the Lower Falls from Artist’s point.
Just past Clear Lake. Almost done with the hike.
At Sulphur Caldron. Lots of interesting smells at Yellowstone.
Dragon's Mouth Spring at the Mud Volcano Area
Drew’s mammoth marshmallows. Another Yellowstone oddity.
Day 7 – 7/1/2011 – Mammoth Hot Springs and Osprey Falls
Today we headed up to the northern section of Yellowstone to Mammoth Hot Springs. We had no idea how HUGE this day would be. Definitely one of our favorites! We saw some cool stuff along the way including some gray wolves, Tower Fall, as well as a Black Bear and another Grizzly! Tower Fall |  |
 Black Bear (bear sighting #4) |  Grizzly Bear (bear sighting #5) |
Mammoth is a small community in northern Yellowstone and it was a little strange to be back near some civilization. It was a fairly long car ride from our campground, about 55 miles, so we were all kind of groggy when we started checking out the hot springs. It was also getting close to 80 or in the low 80s, which at that elevation felt pretty hot. We hiked the boardwalks and checked out all the hot spring formations. Once again, more really cool stuff.
We had the bikes with us because I had seen a trail on the map and thought one of the trailheads was just outside of Mammoth. We never found that one but did find the other end of it at Bunsen Peak road. It's an old road that goes around the base of Bunsen Peak that is closed to vehicles. It's a double-track, offroad trail, basically. Awesome scenery, not too technical. There is a downhill section at the end on some loose gravel and some switchbacks that you have to watch out for. It's 3.5 miles from the road to the trailhead of the trail to Osprey Falls. Bikes are not allowed on this section of the trail, though, the first mile of it would have been some pretty fun singletrack!
I've read that there's a bike rack at this trailhead, but we did not see one. So, we hid our bikes in the woods and took off on foot for the 1.5 mile journey to Osprey Falls. We had no idea of the adventure that awaited us! Drew and I were hesitant to take on a 1.5 mile hike since we were in our biking shoes, but we pressed on and boy, was it worth it!
Heading down the many switchbacks to the river.
Almost to the falls.
At this point we thought that we were there, but we didn't really see any falls, just a major rushing river. The falls were just around the bend, however, and when we got there it was amazing! We were so close and it was so loud! We were all getting sprayed by the falls and feeling the strong breeze that it was generating! It was one of the coolest things we experienced while there!
This video speaks for itself :).
The video shows our ascent back out. Everyone did great and kept a great attitude despite the rugged hike up hill. Then when we got to the end of the trail we retrieved our bikes and set out to do the 3.5 miles back to the car. We were exhausted after all this so went out to eat on the way back to the campsite. On the way, we saw a herd of elk and more of the steam vents.
What a great day!
Day 8 – 7/2/2011 – Grand Prismatic Spring
This was our last day at Yellowstone and we started out with showers and packing up the camper. We then headed out to Fountain Flat Drive in the Lower Geyser Basin for a bike ride.
Fountain Flat Drive dead-ends at a parking lot and then a gravel trail (highlighted on the map above) begins. There was a herd of buffalo at the trail-head. It was a fun ride, again with amazing scenery. The trail was 8 miles round trip.
 |  By Goose lake |
 Grand Prismatic Spring |  |
After the 1st half of the ride we stopped an took a break alongside the river. Then we headed back to the car. After fighting our way through the buffalo heard to get out, we went around to the other side to see the Fountain Paint Pots and the Grand Prismatic Spring up close.
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| Grand Prismatic Spring from the other side |
This was our last adventure in Yellowstone and then we were off to the Grand Tetons. On the way out there was another Grizzly close to the road. That made bear #6 that we saw. We ate dinner at the Lake House in Grant Village.
For our first night in the Grand Tetons, we had a reservation for a tent cabin in Colter Bay Village. This seemed like a good idea but ended up being not the best. However, the campsites in Grand Teton National Park cannot be reserved, so this was the only way we could assure we had a place to stay that night. It's a good thing we did because all the campsites were full that night!
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The grounds were not kept and the mosquitos were horrible. We rented a couple cots and mom and Ashlyn slept on them. Ashlyn's cot squeaked really loudly at every slight move and so she did not get much sleep :(. One cool thing about this cabin was it had a wood burning stove in it which kept us toasty in the night.
Early the next morning I got up early to see if anyone had vacated a campsite that we could move in to. God really blessed use once more and there was a great site that was available. I went up and gave the news, we packed up and headed down. Oh, we also were able to get a full refund for the next two nights of the tent cabin, which was against their policy. Another example of God's grace :).
We moved to Loop L, Site 243 - a nice corner spot with tons of trees. We were able to move back in to the camper, which was nice.
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| Starting the hike. Grand Tetons in background |
Then we hiked along Jenny Lake and then made the turn and followed a roaring stream to Hidden Falls.
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| Hidden Falls |
We grabbed a snack there and were all getting low on water. I had my filter so we filled our water bottles from the cold, mountain stream. We even got to fill a water bottle for a grateful stranger who was running low on a fairly hot day.
We had fun climbing a boulder field across from Hidden Falls to check out the view from up there.
After finishing the hike, we were pretty beat and headed back to the campsite. We ate and then did some laundry and took showers. I think it was about $3 to take a shower at the Colter Bay shower house.
Day 10 – 7/4/2011 – Whitewater Rafting and Jackson Hole, WY
Today is kind of our finale day for our vacation. We headed to Jackson Hole, WY to do some whitewater rafting on the Snake River! We went with the outfitter Sands Whitewater. We decided to rent wetsuits for the girls because Mommy doesn’t like to be cold and the water was about 48 degrees.
Whitewater rafting was a BLAST! The Snake River at that time usually has a volume rating of 12,000 or so cubic feet per second. This year, because there was a large amount of snow in the winter the river was running about 24,000 cubic feet per second! That meant the rapids and waves were HUGE! It also meant that the trip didn’t last as long because the river was so fast, but it was a lot of fun. Our guide emphasized that when he gave the command, “All forward” that everyone needed to paddle hard until he told us to stop. He needed momentum to be able to steer us through the big water and he couldn’t do that without everyone working. It was actually quite the workout. I know were were all sweating at the end.
Our trip included the Big Kahuna and Lunch Counter rapids. The Lunch Counter is the most popular rapid on the Snake River and with the water being as big as it was, some of the waves were over 10 feet. People can even surf there at the rapids. The trip before ours, one of the guides had flipped his raft and 7 people had fallen out. We went through it pretty strong and our guide said it was the best run he had had for the week! This was definitely a highlight of the trip with already so many highlights!
After the raft trip, we hung out in Jackson, got some food and ice cream, and watched the fireworks show. Though we didn’t have the greatest place to watch, it was still fun!
We then headed back to our campsite for our last night of camping.
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| Leaving the Grand Tetons |
The next day we took off and headed south into Colorado to see our good friends, the Morgans, and stayed with them a couple nights. After that we headed to Oklahoma due to an unexpected death in the family and from there we finally made it back to Kansas City on Saturday, July 9.
What an amazing trip!
We are very grateful to God for His provision and protection on this trip. It was a great family experience and we felt He looked out for us the entire time. Whether it was finding a great parking place in a crowded lot, or the great campsites we had at each campground, He really took care of the little things to make it a great trip! (Romans 8:28)
