Summer Vacay!!

For the first week of June, Marshall and I went on a vacation to Jackson Hole and Yellowstone in Wyoming. Marshall had never been to either place and I hadn't been since I was a lot younger, so we both had a great time exploring the area. 

We drove to Jackson on Monday and got there around 3:00 in the afternoon. After checking into our hotel we walked around the town square to see what was there, went to Ripley's Believe It or Not, then drove out to Teton Village for dinner.

We stayed at a little motel called the Ranch Inn. It is right near the historic town square, so we were within walking distance of everything in downtown Jackson.

 In the center of the town square is a little park. At each corner entrance to the park the is an arch made out of elk antlers. Apparently, elk loose their antlers each year, so the local boy scouts collect the antlers, then auction them off in the park as their fundraiser. That is a lot of antlers!

 Ripley's was a little cheesy, but we both still had fun. We thought it was interesting that each Ripley's is specific to the area it is in. Most of this Ripley's was cowboy/western themed.

After Ripley's, we drove out to Teton Village to have dinner at the Mangy Moose. This was my Mom's favorite restaurant in Jackson Hole, so she told us we had to go there. We loved it! The food was great and the decor was amazing. 

The next morning we woke up and went to breakfast at Bubba's BBQ. I know it sounds like a weird place to go for breakfast, but the reviews were great and we loved it. We thought it was funny that Marshall is from California and got a breakfast burrito and I am from Maryland and got biscuits, gravy and grits. Sometimes you can really tell where we are each from.

After breakfast, we drove up to Grand Teton National Park, to Colter Bay to go kayaking. When we got there, we were freezing, and all I had brought for us were bathing suits and shorts. Luckily, we had sweatshirts in the car! Once we got out on the water, though, the wind disappeared and we were warm enough. The weather turned out to be perfect and we had a great time. This was my favorite thing we did on our whole vacation. 

We were so exhausted after a day of kayaking, so that night we wanted to take it easy. We found a dinner show in Jackson called the Bar J Wranglers. It was on a working ranch and they have a huge barn that can fit over 700 people for dinner. They serve a traditional chuckwagon dinner, then 4 "cowboys" get on stage and sing and tell jokes. They were amazing! During the day, all four of them actually work on the ranch and every night during the summer the put on a show. They sing old western songs and kind of play off of each other with the joke part. This was most definitely Marshall's favorite part of the vacation.

The next morning, we woke up, checked out of our hotel and went to rent some bicycles. We went on a 12 mile bike ride right along the base of the mountains. Jackson has the most beautiful views anywhere you look. We even saw a bald eagle on the way back.

After our bike ride, we had a picnic lunch, then drove to West Yellowstone, MT to check into our next hotel. We got to West Yellowstone mid-afternoon, and since we were staying so close to the park, we decided to go in for the afternoon. Not long after we got into the park, we looked to the left and there was a herd of bison with a bunch of cowboys driving them to a different part of the park. 

We drove up to the Norris Geyser Basin to check out some hot springs and geysers. Along the way, we stopped off at Gibbon Falls and The Artist Paint pots. We thought the paint pots were pretty cool because there was actually boiling mud. The picture below is off mud bubbles popping.

 On our way out of the park we got stuck for almost two hours because the bison were just hanging out on the road. At first we thought it was fun because there were so many of them and they had a ton of babies, but by 8:30, we were starving and just wanted to get out of the park. 

On our second day in Yellowstone, we drove down to Old Faithful and hung out there for a while. The geyser erupts about every 90 minutes, so while we were waiting, Marshall wanted to check out the little museum that was there. In all of the places we went, he really like to read about the science behind what was happening.

After we watched Old Faithful erupt, we went into the historic Old Faithful Inn and had lunch at the restaurant there. I'm pretty sure it was the worst service ever and the food was extremely mediocre, but we still liked being in the Inn and seeing the history that is there. The interior architecture is amazing.

When we walked out after lunch, the other large geyser that is there, Butterfly Geyser erupted. This was really neat because Butterfly Geyser only erupts once or (maybe) twice per day. 

After Old Faithful, we just followed the road around Yellowstone more and stopped at the places we thought looked interesting. We saw a bunch of smaller geysers and hot springs including Sapphire Pool, which had some of the clearest water in the park.

After we left the park (and luckily avoided any bison on the road) we had dinner, then went to a small theater in West Yellowstone called the Playmill Theater. The night we went, they performed the broadway version of Beauty and the Beast. For a small theater, they did AMAZING. We were so impressed and glad that we went. If we ever take our future kids to Yellowstone, we will definitely be going back to Playmill.

On our last full day in Yellowstone, we drove up to Mammoth Hot Springs, then continued driving around the north loop in the park, and saw the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We also got to see a ton of different animals.

Marshall and I were surprise at how many different animals we saw while we were in the park that week. We really wanted to see some moose, but we asked a ranger who told us that there are less than 100 moose in the whole park and they are mostly just near the north east entrance, where we never went. But we did get to see the mama bear that had triplets this year for the third time in a row. 

 

Marshall and I have decided that we are going to collect Christmas ornaments from every new place we go together, so we found one in each place we stayed. Other than that we didn't buy too many souvenirs, but we couldn't resist buying some of the Huckleberry jam that was everywhere. 

This was such a fun trip and we are for sure planning on going back with our kids someday.