Third Anniversary in Yellowstone and Grand Teton NP

At the end of August, we went on our annual mini trip for our third anniversary!! For our first anniversary, we spent a few days in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Last year for our second anniversary, we explored Yosemite National Park. This year, we drove up north to adventure through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park. We also deemed this trip our babymoon, because apparently that's a thing! Whatever you want to call the trip, we loved getting away together for a long weekend alone :)

Yellowstone National Park

We left early on a Friday morning and drove up to Yellowstone National Park. Dustan had never been to Yellowstone before and I had only been briefly over a decade ago, so it was basically a new experience for both of us. I was in charge of the trip this year (we switch who plans it each year), and I was very excited to take Dustan to the awesome sites I had been looking up and researching for weeks. We also love being able to use our annual parks pass, which has been so worth it!

Our first stop in Yellowstone was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone! We had entered the park through West Yellowstone and it took a while to drive to the Canyon, but the views were beautiful! We stopped at Artist Point that had just an amazing lookout to the Lower Falls toward the end of the Grand Canyon. It was seriously beautiful. Fun fact, the Lower Falls are 308 feet tall and are formed from the Yellowstone River (what an original name).

We had been planning on hiking down to be right next to these Lower Falls via Uncle Tom's Trail, but it was closed for road and trail renovations :( We talked to a ranger and they recommended that we hike down the Red Rock Point trail instead, which we did. This path was fairly steep and a mixture of pavement and wooden stairs. It was super short, and we reached the bottom (since we hiked down from the edge of the canyon into the canyon) in no time. Of course we took a few pictures here.

Afterward, we made a quick stop at the closest Visitors Center in Canyon Village to grab some early dinner sandwiches before starting the long drive to our reserved campsite for the night. I didn't' really know this before I started research Yellowstone, but it is a HUGE park. It takes hours to drive through. There is one main road throughout the whole park and is shaped like an 8. Because we only had about a day total in the park, we only explored the lower loop of the park during this visit. Canyon Village was about in the center of the park, and our campsite was at Grant Village, at the far south end. The drive took us about an hour with the animal traffic. The traffic was worth it though, we saw lots of bison and I very briefly saw a sleeping grizzly bear.

Once we finally reached our campsite, we checked in and set up our tent while it was still light out. Then we hopped back in the car and drove to the Great Fountain Geyser for sunset. This wasn't a big spouting geyser like many would imagine. More like some calm bubbling. The reflection of the sunset on the water of the geyser was beautiful though. And of course we had to take a couple silhouette pictures of the belly.

After this stop, we continued on the same side road until we reached the White Dome Geyser, which looks like a mini volcano ready to erupt. It had a constant stream of smoke coming out of the top and some faint gurgling noises from the geyser within. While we were taking some pictures here, we were serenaded by the sound of a pack of howling coyotes. It was really neat. We also made a short stop at some bubbling geysers on the side of the road.

By this time it was pretty dark, and we weren't going to be able to see much in the park anymore. We drove back to our campsite at Grant Village, thankful that we had already set up our tent and bed inside. We went to bed fairly early for us before 10:00 pm (it was dark, so there wasn't much to do) and so that we could get the good night of rest we hadn't gotten the night before. We really wanted to sleep well on this trip, so we brought not only our air mattress, but our memory foam mattress topper as well. It was definitely the most comfy I have ever been camping! We opted to not try and go see sunrise anywhere (ain't nobody got time fo dat) and just slept until about 7:30 am. Then, we packed up camp, ate yummy pastries in the car for breakfast, and headed to see Old Faithful! Happy Anniversary to us ;)

Old Faithful erupts on average every 90 minutes, though it actually can erupt anywhere from 35 minutes to 120 minutes apart, which is pretty crazy. They have schedules up for the next eruption time (give or take 10 minutes) in the Old Faithful Visitors Center. We arrived there and checked the time, and it was set to erupt in 15 minutes, which means it could go off almost any minute! We hustled/ran our way over to Old Faithful along with over 50 other people, and made it in time. It actually erupted a little later than expected. Though the eruption was really neat and SO tall, we didn't think it was one of the coolest things at the park. Definitely impressive though.

Before eruption

Towards the end of eruption

After Old Faithful, we drove over to the Grand Prismatic Spring, which was quite close. We first walked the boardwalk around the amazing colorful geyser, but soon realized that you couldn't get a really good view with all the steam in the way and without some height above the geyser. We did get a good look of one of the other smaller geysers, just below though. But we left and drove down the road a ways to a short hiking path that led to an overlook, starting at the Fairy Falls Trailhead.

It was HOT and sandy, and totally worth it. Seeing the Grand Prismatic Spring from the overlook was simply amazing. I can't believe such vivid colors exist naturally in nature sometimes! It was one of our favorite sights on the Yellowstone trip, easily.

Then, with just about an hour left to spare to explore the park, we took a small hike around the Norris Geyser Basin. We only did one of the loops, but again saw some amazing and colorful geyser (though none as majestic as the Grand Prismatic). We especially liked all the steam rising up from random holes in the ground and the constant bubbling and gurgling noises.

And just like that, it was already time to leave Yellowstone National Park! We made a quick stop at a Visitor's Center (I don't remember which one this time...) to get some Wilcoxin Ice Cream and buy our customary postcard and keychain. The ice cream was amazingly cheap for in park Yellowstone food and so delicious. We loved the mountain berry/huckleberry ice cream. YUM.

That night, we had reservations for dinner for our anniversary. We drove out of Yellowstone through the south entrance this time and get a sneak peak of Grand Teton National Park, which we would be exploring the next day. The drive down to Jackson Hole area took a surprisingly long time, but thankfully we arrived at our reservation just in time! We were eating at the Bar J Chuckwagon for dinner :)

Dinner was awesome! We splurged a little more than our normal dinner meal (it was about $30 each), but the meal included all you can eat meat, baked beans, baked potatoes, corn bread, applesauce, spice cake, and lemonade--all homemade of course--AND a show from the Bar J Wranglers. It was totally worth the money. The Bar J Wrangers are a country music group (guitar, fiddle, banjo, etc.) who are permanent performers at the Chuckwagon during the summer. They put on a music/comedy/cowboy show. It was awesome, and we were totally pleased with our anniversary dinner choice.

Afterward, we headed to our "hotel" reservation in Victor, Idaho. This was our one total fail of the trip. We booked what was supposed to be a charming Bed and Breakfast little cabin type place on booking.com. Typically booking.com has very trustworthy places. But apparently not! This place dubbed "Yellowstone Cabin" was totally sketchy. This crazy old guy was renting out rooms in his very scary cabin. We had rented one of the suite type rooms that had the attached bathroom. This was apparently this dude's master bedroom that he typically slept in, and we have strong doubts that he did anything to prepare it for guests. The sheets on the bed especially scared me. His toothpaste and razor were sitting on the dirty bathroom countertop. Flies and moths flew around the room. Trash was piled in one corner. Needless to say... It wasn't really the romantic B&B we were gong for on our anniversary, haha. We definitely got a good laugh out of it during and after the experience, at least after our initial disappointment. The next morning, we woke up and got ready for church and found that there was no breakfast provided and that we were supposed to pay in cash. Luckily, we actually were only short about $15 in cash and the dude said he would just take that instead. Sketchy, right? Oh well, overall it was quite the funny experience!! Aside from a sketchy hot shower, we would have just preferred camping again ;) The pictures honestly make it look better than it did!

We had a lovely time at church in Victor. Afterward, we drove back through Jackson Hole and of course stopped to get a picture under the famous antler arch in the middle of town. From there, we drove to Grand Teton National Park!!

Grand Teton National Park

Our first stop was to find a camping spot. Unlike Yellowstone, Grand Teton doesn't do camping reservations unless you have a huge group. We were luckily able to get a campsite at one of the more central campgrounds of the park in Colter Bay. Again, we quickly set up camp in the daylight (it was only around late lunchtime at this point) then headed to String Lake.

There, we had a small picnic then I forced Dustan to take a few photos with me while we were still dressed nice for our anniversary :) We hope to take pictures on or close to our anniversary every year! You can see past ones here. Some are below, but my favorite of the batch is at the very top of this post!

After some cute tripod pics, we changed into some comfier outdoorsy clothes and did the short hike/walk from String Lake to Leigh Lake. It was a short walk, only about one mile to reach Leigh Lake. It was a beautiful walk though. We were right alongside Strong Lake the whole time with the stunning mountain range in the background. Leigh Lake was even prettier, and far less busy. We lounged with our feet in the water for a while and took a short nap. Just before walking back, Dustan took a quick dip in the Lake.

On our walk back to String Lake, we encountered baby deer! They were so cute. We crossed paths with many of them. And we took some more pictures of them and the lake, of course.

By this time, it was starting to get close to dinner and sunset time. Yes, we spent a lot of time chilling on that rock by Leigh Lake, haha. We hopped back in our car and drove over to Schwabacher Landing for sunset. It was a short walk along a stream until we reach the most picturesque spot. There, we set up our camera tripod to mark our spot for photographing the sunset and ate our not so delicious dinner of canned soups and vegetables. We were soon joined by a plethora of other photographers also there for sunset--we were glad we got there early!

 The sunset was certainly beautiful. The colors in the sky were nothing particularly incredible, unfortunately, but the reflection of the Tetons on the small pond definitely made the stop worthwhile. As the sun dropped behind the mountains, there were even some sun rays that added some variety to the sky. It was a very peaceful sunset and we had fun chatting with the other photographers there.

We made a few stops on the way back to our campsite when the sky or view looked particularly stunning (it wasn't quite dark yet). The mountains made a great backdrop where ever we were. Once we reached our campsite, we quickly got ready for bed (yay for campsites with running water bathrooms!) and crashed. We once again chose to not wake up early for any sunrise opportunities, haha. But we did get an early start the next morning and were out of our campsite by 8:00 am to go on a hike!

We went straight to Jenny Lake, supposedly one of the most beautiful spots at the Park. And we didn't disagree! The lake was so serene. We were hiking to Hidden Falls on the opposite side of the Lake. We could have taken an expensive ferry ride across to the other side of the Lake, but we just decided to walk the extra mile to get there. Pretty soon, the trail started climbing and we had amazing views of Jenny Lake.

Once we reached the opposite side of the Lake (and a much higher elevation), it was only a short stroll through a more wooded area until we reached Hidden Falls. Once there, we ate a small snack while simply enjoying the pretty views--along with a bunch of cheaters who took the ferry across the Lake, haha.

After we had gotten our fill, we did the short hike up to Inspiration Point. Normally there is also an upper Inspiration Point, which we had been planning on doing instead. But after talking to a ranger that told us that the hike was over an extra mile for no different of a view, we decided it wasn't going to be worth it. The views at at the lower point were good enough for us!

After some fun pictures, we started the hike back! Again, we chose to not take the ferry and just hike back around the Lake. We made a few stops to eat snacks and take pictures, but mostly just hustled. It was beginning to get very hot! My back was starting to hurt quite a bit from the hike (baby woes), but I was really glad I was still able to complete the hike fine.

After getting back to the trailhead by our car, we rinsed off our feet and Chacos in a river off the side of the road. Then, we stopped in the Jenny Lake gift shop to buy a couple roadtrip snacks and our traditional postcard and keychain of the adventure. Then, it was time to drive back to Provo! We LOVED our short weekend away, just us two. We were so happy to be able to visit these National Parks for our third anniversary/babymoon, it was perfect :)