Idaho

Idaho

Teton and Yellowstone

Posted on July 9, 2013 by annabelrv

This is an exciting day! My sister gave birth to a little boy this afternoon. Congratulations to John and Katie and the three big sisters! I have now been blessed with 21 nieces and nephews!

So… I have fallen behind in blogging. We had a wonderfully busy weekend and then Monday I had a terrible headache all day, so I will try to get a little caught up now. And I am sorry this post is so long. Friday we were back in Teton to hike a trail that skirted beautiful Jenny Lake. Saturday, Nick and George had a wonderful adventure exploring a wind cave in Targhee National Forest (hopefully he’ll blog about that tomorrow). Sunday we spent the day in Yellowstone National Park. I should say we spent *most* of the day in Yellowstone, because we were actually in two national parks, 3 states (Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho), 3 national forests and a wilderness area before the day was done. It was quite a day!

Hiking around Jenny Lake on Friday

Sunday we drove through Teton, making a few stops, to get to Yellowstone.

Visiting the AMAZING Yellowstone National Park

A picnic lunch at Lewis Lake (Luckily, we did not encounter Yogi Bear!)

We saw Old Faithful and other geysers erupt. Very cool!

The Lewis River and Nez Perce Creek

Wildlife! We saw a lot of really awesome things in Yellowstone, but the wildlife was definitely the highlight! Most of the creatures we saw in the park were along the Nez Perce Creek (coyote, elk, and buffalo).

I wish I would have gotten more pictures of Idaho, but we were all tired by the end of the day and a storm was approaching so we just wanted to get home. In any case, the farm land was so lovely and I have never seen so many wildflowers. It was absolutely delightful! Here are a couple of pictures of the the Tetons from the Idaho side.

The Tetons have loomed up grandly against the sky. From this point it is perhaps the finest pictorial range in the United States or even North America. -Thomas Moran, while painting the Tetons from the Idaho side, 1879

Categories: Idaho, Montana, National Forests, National Parks, wildlife, Wyoming | Tags: Grand Teton National Park, Jenny Lake, Lewis Lake, Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park | 1 Comment

Two of those days

Posted on June 3, 2013 by annabelrv

Do you know those kinds of days when nothing – absolutely nothing – goes as planned? Yeah, that kind of day. We have had two of them in a row.

Montana was lovely, but we were all ready to move on to new (as in warmer, dryer) places. We headed out Saturday morning toward Idaho. The idea was to camp near the small town of Kingston, canoe down the Coeur d’Alene river, and celebrate my son’s birthday. We arrived as planned. The area was beautiful. Really beautiful. We crossed a narrow one-lane bridge to get to the rv park where we had planned to camp, only to discover the office was closed. There was no where to turn around so we, with our very long travel trailer, just kept driving down this crazy country road. We were relieved to find a second rv park a ways down. But alas, it apparently was a party place and actually had its own bar with a large bon fire planned for that night. That wasn’t the quiet evening we had envisioned, so we kept moving down the road. We ended up all the way over in Coeur d’Alene. By the time we got there it was too late to canoe. So, we decided to just go to dinner to celebrate Caleb’s birthday. After two failed attempts at other restaurants, we ended up at Denny’s. By this point, it was just comical. Thankfully, we were all able to laugh at the continuous mishaps and, in the end, Caleb had a great day in spite of the craziness!

Happy 19th birthday, Caleb!

The beautiful Coeur d’Alene Lake

Having fun at the Wolf Lodge Campground

Umm… karate kid? lol

Today was rough. We were all tired. Nerves were a bit frayed.We had lost our sense of humor. Our 4 hour drive to the Mt. Rainier area turned into a 9 hour drive. We ended up slightly past the Mount St. Helens area. One thing after another went wrong. By the time we finally got parked at a campground, our rear bumper was coming off (enough said). We decided to go out to a local pizza place to relax a bit after such a stressful day… yeah, the restaurant ended up being a mom and pop version of Chuck E. Cheese. Seriously?! LOL! At that point we had to laugh. We’re all hoping tomorrow is a better day!