Glacier + Yellowstone (Part 2)

Our time in Glacier was short, but we made the most out of it (read Part 1 here). The second half of our trip was spent exploring Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons.

Day four was spent exploring the lower loop of Yellowstone. Right when we entered the park, we saw TONS of buffalo. We even had to stop in traffic to let some cross the road.

We stopped at a few smaller geysers along the way to Grand Prismatic Springs. It was absolutely beautiful. The colors of the water were so vibrant and the steam rolling off the top was just as colorful!

From there we stopped at Old Faithful. We shopped and ate lunch in the lodge and then walked over just in time to see Old Faithful erupt. The next stop was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, but along the way we drove through the West Thumb area. We saw so much wildlife!! There was tons of buffalo, elk, and a grizzly bear! When we got to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, we could see a thunderstorm coming, so we looked at it real quick and took off back to the car to head home. We stopped for dinner at Hanks Chop Shop and ended the night in the hot tub at our AirBnb.

Day five, we drove to the Grand Tetons! It was about a 3 hour drive from our house, so by the time we got there it was already time for lunch. We took the tram to the top of the mountain and ate waffles at Corbet’s Cabin. The view from the top was indescribably beautiful. After the waffles, we walked around the little village and then drove to downtown Jackson Hole to shop around. We ate supper at Merry Piglets Tex-Mex. We had planned on taking the boat across Jenny Lake and hiking to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point, but traffic was bad on the way so decided to skip that for this trip.

Day six ended up being a bust! We had planned to drive and do the upper loop of Yellowstone. We had it all mapped out, but the traffic to get into Yellowstone was so backed up that it was going to take us FOUR HOURS to get to where we wanted to be. The upper loop didn’t have much to do, so we decided to shop around and then head back to Kalispale for the night so we would be closer to the airport. On the drive, we stopped in Big Sky for coffee and shopped around downtown, and at the Bozeman Hot Springs. it was going to be about $60 for us to get in the Hot Springs since it is a developed Hot Springs, so our car decided to shop and go eat instead.

Overall, we had the best time on our trip!! We got to see a lot more than we expected to see, even thought we didn’t get to check all the things off our list. We have already planned out trips back to each individual area to explore more!!

If you have been, let me know what we missed that we need to add to our list for the next trip.