Travels: Yellowstone, Wyoming

In the summer of 2010 my husband (then boyfriend) and I took a massive road trip out west -- we left from Kansas City, looped up north into Washington and BC, drove down the coast through California, and then came back east through Utah and Colorado. We hit as many national parks as possible and did a ton of camping. Today I'm sharing one of the places we visited: Yellowstone National Park. Don't let the bears scare you off: the park is enormous and stunningly beautiful. I wish we had had more time there; we were only there for a day before moving on to Montana. Here are some photos of our trip (again, all photos taken by me)...

It was raining as we left Cody, Wyoming, and drove toward the park. We didn't know it yet, but we were heading for one of the scariest nights of camping we've ever encountered. We arrived late, around nightfall, and barely got our tent set up before a torrential downpour commenced, complete with strong gusts of wind that threatened to collapse our tent, as well as too-close-for-comfort thunder and lightning. 

I didn't even have time to worry about the bears.

Anyway, before we got to Yellowstone, it had cleared up a little on our drive:

Once we arrived, the views were even more breathtaking:

About 30 minutes after I took the above picture, the downpour commenced.

The next morning, thoroughly shaken by the storms the night before, we were glad to see the sun was shining. We set out to explore the park (it is enormous, and we didn't have bikes, so we drove). Our dog Roscoe kept a nose out for buffalo:

I loved the views of the mountains above the lake. It was crazy to see snow on the mountains even in July!

Roscoe got tired of sniffing and took a nap:

He was then completely oblivious to all actual buffalo sightings. The photo below isn't even as close as we got... one walked down the road right next to our car! (My guess is buffaloes are the cause of most Wyoming traffic jams.)

We stopped by these hot springs, but they were dried up for the summer. The white rocks were still beautiful:

And of course, we went and watched Old Faithful. It totally lived up to all the hype. Unfortunately, I took a video while it was actually going full-blast, so I only have a photo to share of it warming up:

So that's Yellowstone! Definitely worth a visit of at least a couple days. The camping is great too -- I say that even though it stormed so terribly while we were there -- the campgrounds are nice and the weather is (normally) extremely mild, even in the summer. 

I've got more places in the Western US and national parks to share soon. I love Kansas City, but when I look at these photos of our trip, I want to move out West! The humidity in the Midwest just might force us to take the leap someday :)

-Megan