Super Yellowstone National Park Roadtrip Adventure

At Mammoth in front of the terraces

Wow, what a trip! I can honestly say that last week was one of the BEST weeks, traveling with a wonderful person, I've had in a really long time! Chris and I had one fun filled adventure traveling through WY/Yellowstone National Park/MT!

Chris on (well off of) the Popo Agie Trail in Sinks Canyon, WY

Popo Agie Falls

On Monday we headed out pretty early and made our way to Lander, WY where we pulled the bikes out and did a nice little XC ride up to the Popo Agie Falls in Sinks Canyon. It was a really nice break on our way to Jackson Hole.

Just outside Dubois, WY

The Grand Tetons (with an anvil cloud)

From Lander, we headed up through Dubois and over the Jackson Hole. The drive from Dubois to Jackson is amazingly beautiful! I LOVE the Grand Tetons!! We stayed with my long time friend Brian Lenz in Jackson and enjoyed some pub food and some good beer before crashing at his super spacious studio apartment.

Ferrin's Trail with the Grands in the background...amazing!!

Classic :) On our way back from the Ferrin's Trail in Jackson

We got up on Tuesday and after a filling brekkie at Jedediah's, we headed up Cache Creek to do a little riding on Snow King Mountain. We hit up a trail called Ferrin's which had a good grade for climbing and a super fun descent from the top! The only bad part of the ride was me getting stung in the face by some bug on the road on the way back! It hurt when it happened, but the aftermath for the following three days is what really sucked! My eye got so swollen it looked like Chris had punched me. haha After our daily dose of single track, we got going and headed up to through Grand Teton National Park and into Yellowstone National Park.

Swollen left eye...thanks for punching me Chris! haha

Thermophilic bacteria and sulphur create the vibrant colors

Our first stop was at West Thumb. We got out to stretch our legs a little bit and get Chris introduced to some of the cool geothermal activity in the park. Also...we learned about how crowded Yellowstone can be and how the hoards of tourists can be a little overwhelming!

Natural Bridge in YNP

Flip Flop Scrambling

I think we might have been the "attraction" for them

After that, we stopped at the Natural Bridge. I don't think most people visit this pretty cool rock formation, as it's a bit "off the road". We rode our bikes out there and hiked around a bit. After that, we decided to head up to Norris to see if we could find camping. Everyone said you had to have reservations, but we drove up at 7:30 and found a spot, no problem! Chris whipped up a wonderful dinner (as usual!) and we enjoyed the $2.99 German Chocolate Cake that we bought on special in Jackson for desert. We had some noisy and very fat neighbors that were traveling with 8 little dogs. They were strange, to say the least! The coolest part about this night, though was that we were awoken in the middle of the night to a symphony of wolves howling! It was really coo, and slightly eerie to hear them. It was almost as if two different groups of them were talking to each other! I guess if you don't get to see the wolves...getting to hear them singing a tune is the next best thing!

The Artist's Paint Pot area

Wednesday morning we headed down to the Artist's Paint Pots. We got there pretty early and the road from Norris to Madison was closed beyond this turn off, so as a result, we had the place nearly to ourselves. There is an amazing boiling mud pot here that is very cool and pictures can't do justice to!

Chris' sweet find!

Chris had spotted something cool along the river on our way there, so on the way back, we stopped off and checked out a really neat thermal feature that we were able to walk through the river and right up to. I'm not sure this is how they intend for you to enjoy this feature of the park, but we thought it was great! From there, we headed up to Mammoth, on the north side of the park. There are some hot springs that you're allowed to sit in just north of town. The Boiling River dumps into the very chilly Gallatin River creating some of the best hot springs I've ever been to! After soaking ourselves to prune status, we checked out the terraces that Mammoth is famous for. They are very surreal, with some having amazing colors and others being "dried up" and looking like ice sculptures.

This canyon, near Tower, is pretty spectacular

Lower Falls of Yellowstone Canyon, 309 feet high

From there we headed back south along the west side of the park, stopping to enjoy different sites along the way. We stopped off to check out the Upper and Lower Falls. These are both pretty spectacular water falls with the lower one being 300+ feet high. We took the 328 metal stairs route down the the lower vantage point to enjoy the view. We definitely broke a sweat as we hiked out! After that we were lucky enough to see a grizzly bear cub! The poor thing was being harassed by tourons left and right. We weren't able to grab a photo, unfortunately, but I've never seen a bear in the park before, so Chris was pretty lucky to have gotten to see one! From there, we enjoyed a few more mud pot/sulphur cauldron sites along the way to Old Faithful.

Old Faithful is a bit of a Superhighway in Yellowstone. I think it's one of the most famous sites to see whilst there, albeit not the coolest, in my opinion, but regardless, I think it's a must see, if you're there! We got there about 45 minutes before the next geyser was set to go off, so we joined the throngs of people sitting around waiting for the show. Chris got some good pics of the action, and before the show was over, we bailed to avoid the mass chaos of people! We concluded our Yellowstone tour and headed out of the park to West Yellowstone to camp for the evening. On our way out of the park, we also were lucky enough to see a bald eagle chilling near the river. All in all, Chris got to see (and hear) a lot of cool stuff that most people are never lucky enough to see, and I think we were able to enjoy a few of the many beautiful sites in the park mostly sans super-crowds!

Old Faithful

We stayed just north of West for the night and got up and headed to the bike shop in town to get some beta on where some good rides might be. We headed out of town towards ID and drove to the top of the pass. From here we jumped on the Continental Divide Trail and started climbing. The trail was a bit rough due to heavy horse traffic (apparently whilst muddy!)

FUN, FUN trail riding in West Yellowstone

We didn't really know where we were going or wanting to go, but we just kept climbing through beautiful high alpine meadows full of amazing wild flowers. At one point, another trail crossed our path so we jumped on it and it started descending on a super fun and challenging trail. We ran into a dude ranch group on horses and found out we could keep descending on fun trails all the way back to the highway! It was so much fun and all we had to do was climb back up the pass on the road to get back to the car. All in a days work of chasing single track adventures! :) On to Butte, MT to visit my sister.

Butte, is apparently one of the oldest towns in the west, with its roots in mining. There have been several open pit mines in Butte with the most famous (and disastrous) one being the Berkley mine. They have made a complete mess of the hillside in Butte and depending on how things progress are slated to contaminate a whole watershed with heavy metals withing the next 10 years! Not so cool! It was really nice to catch up with my sister and her family. My nephew is so cute! I don't get to see him nearly enough!

We headed down to my cousin's in Bozeman to do a bit more fun single track hunting. Julie took us out to the Leverage trail south of town and put the hurt on! Well, it put the hurt on me anyway. Chris has a stout 37-32 on his bike right now, and he pedaled up the hill seemingly effortlessly, whilst I was in the back wheezing like a fat kid with asthma in my granny ring! :( Once we got to the top, though, it was well worth it! The descent on that trail was super fun, flowy and fast!

To finish out the grand tour, we stopped in Laurel, MT to have lunch with my Grandma and then headed down to Powell, WY to visit my parents for the night. They made us a nice steak dinner to cap off Chris' Wild West Adventure! The ride home was full of construction, speeding tickets and tears, so 6 outta 7 nearly perfect days made up the best week I've had in a long, long time! Thanks for being so fun to travel with Chris!

I think Chris had fun seeing the MT/WY sites and getting ride in new places.