In mid September we flew into Bozeman, Montana to spend 5 days in Yellowstone National Park.
It really is one of the most amazing places, it’s the first National Park ever, so it’s very untouched, Bison, Elk and Bears etc all roam free and steam rises up from the ground as the park is on top of a huge volcano…
I had wanted to go since I was little, so I was very excited to get there and we also went horse riding so I nearly died of happiness.
It’s hard to know how to explain how amazing it was, so hopefully the pictures do the talking! Just for some context this is where we were:
Firstly at our stopover in Minneapolis there was a Benefit (make up and beauty stuff) vending machine styled into a truck – stop it, adorable! Bloody Mary’s in the lounge of course.
Rob drove our trusty Jeep you can see below (I even had my first go driving on the right hand side of the road – eeek!).
Wide open spaces everywhere, rivers, mountains and trees.
Our first stop was Montana Grizzly Experience which we knew from the TV show about Brutus the Bear. It was so cool to get so close to these bears without having to worried about being killed! This was Lucy who was just adorable…
Lucy having a dip:
Big Sky Mountain, it was summertime so quite quiet but beautiful views all around:
Witihin our first 30 minutes driving through Yellowstone, we had many Bison sightings, this one crossing the road was only a few meters from the car – SO COOL.
Elk by the river:
Steam coming out of geysers… another world
Grand Prismatic Spring:
The view from the ground was ok, but we climbed up a mountain to get a better look!
After driving south right through Yellowstone, we entered the Grand Teton National Park. The Tetons are the very impressive mountain range. The lodge we stayed at looked right over the river at the mountains.
We stopped for a picnic on the way to our lodge… not a bad spot.
We went horse riding at Jackson Lake Lodge, just around the corner from Signal Mountain where we were staying, in the Grand Teton National Park. Rob’s horse was Pig Pen (!) and mine was Linda, to me she was Linda Evangelista.
Hanging with my best girlfriend Linda after the ride:
The mountain range was huge and very spectacular. The bottom right photo was taken first thing in the morning when the clouds sat around the mountains. It’s hard to cull these photos, so I’m just including a whole bunch.
After our horse ride we drove down to Jackson Hole, which I loved – definitely a cowboy town! The Million Dollar Cowboy Bar had saddles to sit on at the bar, love it!
After a big day Rob was tired… Our log cabin, back at Signal Mountain Lodge:
As we made our way back up to Bozeman and back through Yellowstone on the last day, we saw the Yellowstone Grand Canyon, the size of it was what I would describe as SUPERHUGE, so beautiful and intimidating as there weren’t rails!
After the Canyon we continued on towards Mammoth where lots of Elk were hanging out. We saw these elk on a mountain that we probably shouldn’t have walked up to take photos… I think we got a bit too close, but we survived. It was mating season and the Bull Elk can get super aggressive. Oops!
Elk were taking over the town of Mammoth, it was pretty funny. There were park rangers in their ranger cars with flashing lights running around keeping all the tourists (like us) a safe distance away from them. You can see the huge bull elk with his massive antlers here :
Our home for the final evening… It’s a trip we would highly recommend to anyone, it was very sad to leave and cannot wait to go back again!