Yellowstone

Yellowstone has been on our list for a few years now.  We finally took the days off work and it was TOTALLY worth it!

Prepare for lots of pictures...

We got to Jackson Hole at dusk and decided to stay there and drive into Yellowstone the next day. I love that you can see the Tetons in the background. 

We started out with this little cute waterfall just off the road. 

Of course the waterfalls got a little bit bigger.

 The van is great for taking our bikes with us so we took a short 2 mile "trail" - it was paved - to a geyser named Lonestar. 

It only goes off every 3 hours so we spent a lot of time waiting.

Finally it went off - it was totally worth the wait.

Next was the hot pools.

It was pretty hot while we were there so we took a swim in the Firehole river. After which we cooked dinner. 

It went from hot to cold and rainy pretty quick.  Forgive the next pictures, we're in rain jackets.

We went up to Mammoth Hot Springs at the very top of Yellowstone.  It was pretty cool but kind of far away from the rest of the attractions.
 

This is where we camped.  The park campgrounds were full so we had to drive out of the park to sleep.  I kind of liked it this way because we were relatively isolated.

Yellowstone north entrance.

I don't want to talk about how early we got up...

Aaron was a little more chipper...

Oh there, I must have had breakfast by this point...

We really wanted to see a bear - I even made Aaron buy some bear spray before we left.  But what we lacked in bear luck we made up for in bison luck.  They were so close to the car!

The upper and lower falls were amazing!

The hike, however, was pretty steep.

I loved this trip.  The van worked great, I slept fabulously, and the weather was rainy - yes for a bit - but it cooled off considerably after the rain stopped which made for some great hikes. We will definitely be going back.