Epic Roadtrip Journal: 6/12/11 Grand Tetons/Yellowstone National Parks

Writing from Grand Tetons:
It rained all night, and it is still drizzling now, and my fingers are numb writing this, but who gives a fuck; I'm in one of the most beautiful places in the world (sweet attitude brah!). No stargazing, sunset, or sunrise due to cloud cover, but it honestly doesn't matter. I passed out right when I got in the tent last night. I barely made it into my sleeping bag.
This morning, I got up before everyone else and walked down to the lake (Jenny Lake, where we camped at). It was preposterously amazing, even with clouds covering the mountains. Shit's getting tranquil up in here. Then I saw another moose. Holy shit. I was, I kid you not, about 10 feet away from it. No exaggeration. I took some amazing pictures (including one of myself on a timer), stalked it a bit, and then went to have a bagel-y breakfast.

Am I doing it right?

Writing from Yellowstone:
After breakfast, Scott, Alex, and I went for a short hike around String Lake toward Paintbrush Canyon. It was a really pleasant hike made better by the fact that we didn't see another person the entire time. The mountains were covered by clouds, but the awesome pine trees and snow covered mountain slopes were still gorgeous. Stomping through virgin snow in the middle of June is probably one of the top things you can do in life. We got to a mini hill, where Scott suggested we trail blaze up the hillside. Alex then had the incredible idea to sled down on our asses. It was I who recommended we do it again. It was a blast, even if our asses got soaking wet. Then we ran/slid down the snowy slopes and made it back to camp pretty quickly.

Soaking wet pants are TOTALLY worth it

After breaking down the tent, we drove to the Colter Bay area for a quick, easy little hike by Jackson Lake. It was a nice way to say our goodbyes to the Grand Tetons. We then drove along the Rockefeller Parkway into Yellowstone. There was a crapload of snow and everything was beautiful. Yep, that's how I'd sum up the entire park so far. We crossed the Continental Divide (where water flow changes direction from one side of the continent to the other) like 3 times and drove the zig-zag mountainous road through a lot of the southern portion of the park. I probably had about 10 mini freakout sessions due to everything being so epic.
Our first main stop was Old Faithful, which is a geyser (no shit) that goes off every 90-130 minutes or something. Whatever, I'm not a stopwatch. Our timing was incredibly fortuitous, because it blew it's load RIGHT AS WE ARRIVED. Perfect timing. It was a really fantastic sight to behold: boiling water launched up about 130 feet. We then took a long walk around a lot of the other geysers, hot springs, and other geothermal sites. Oh wait, that's the ENTIRE PARK. Everywhere you drive there is sulfur-y, acrid, smelly steam coming off the ground, or some thermal vent or hot spring. It is unbelievable. Anyway, we saw about 20 geysers, including Beehive Geyser, which is WAY better than Old Faithful. The blast is actually taller and you can stand way closer. The nozzle is also smaller, so the water rockets out of the opening like it's on crack or something (I'm pretty sure that's not possible). It only goes off once or twice in a day, so we were super lucky to be there. Granted, my warm weather clothes got soaking wet with boiling sulfur-water (I took them off when it got warmer out, and when the geyser went off, it shifted directions and sprayed Nads, Scott, and Alex, who forgot that my shirts were right next to them in their insane panic to get away from the steam), but hopefully they will dry by tomorrow morning... (spoiler alert: they didn't.)

We also saw 6 or 7 buffalo RIGHT NEXT TO the walkway, so close that I could literally touch them if I wanted, and they didn't give a shit about ANYTHING. There were 3 tiny baby bison with them, and they were adorbs.
Scott and I ran to a lookout (literally ran) that overlooked the entire geothermal area, which was a really interesting perspective. We came down, saw a few more geysers (oh, at this point I'm apparently underwhelmed by the FANTASTIC MAJESTY THAT IS A GEOTHERMAL EVENT), saw Old Faithful go off again,and then saw the CUTEST black and brown puppy that I have ever seen in my entire life. Without superlative, that puppy was the best. So yeah - saw Old Faithful go off 3 times from different angles, saw a buffalo family, saw a shitload of geysers, saw the cutest puppy in the history of the Universe: great stop at Old Faithful Village.
We then drove to Canyon Village, where we are currently camping. We stopped at a few notable views, were amazed by the green awesome trees (LOOK AT ALL THE GWEEEEEN), and rocked out to Queen whilst driving some fun roads. But the best was having a HERD of buffalo cross the street all around our car. There were probably 60-70 bison. They stopped traffic for about 45 minutes, but it was absolutely worth it. I got great pictures and it was a quintessential Yellowstone adventure. Some of them were fucking enormous. I think my adrenaline was going nonstop (however, my adrenaline going nonstop is not an abnormal event).

We kept yelling at the buffalo from the car: "CROSS IN FRONT OF US, WE WANT TO LOOK AT YOU."

We then had to deal with some incompetent, over 60-year-old campground people at our campsite, but after an hour-long fiasco of changing our snow-covered site to a site where we could AT LEAST set up our tent on the pavement next to the road (there was also an unnecessary amount of highlighting on our site map by the campground guy who didn't know how to use a computer). (WOW. I really toned down the intense frustration here. Dealing with those people was seriously the worst. In fact, I literally just filled out a survey for customer satisfaction. I gave them the worst possible score in every category. WE COULDN'T EVEN FIND OUR FIREPIT in the 3 feet of snow that covered our campsite). It is a shitty location, but at least our tent isn't DIRECTLY on snow. There is seriously about 2-3 feet of snow everywhere; I think it might be a cold stay...

One benefit to having a wall of snow around our picnic table is that we have a place to keep the beer cold

We had noms at the Canyon Village Lodge, where I had some Wyoming beer and Bison ravioli. Pretty damn good. Now I'm lying on pavement in our tent, freezing cold, starting to smell, and super tired and dirty - it was a great day.
Some notable moments were when Nadkarns coined the term "Hagstag," a clever play on the twatter phrase hashtag. I rofl'd. Another is when we had just left our snow covered campsite for dinner. We had just finished eating and Alex goes "should we buy some more ice?" (Nadkarns needs ice for cooling her newly healing knee). I simply responded "shut up," assuming he was being a jackass talking about how COMPLETELY COVERED our campsite is with snow. He apparently had forgotten. I hadn't.

Epic Roadtrip Journal: 6/11/11 Grand Tetons National Park

Continuing to day 2 of the roadtrip. Holy shit, I have no idea if it should be roadtrip or road trip, and I keep flip-flopping. THIS IS SLIGHTLY ANNOYING TO ME.

We started our morning by waking up at 4:30am in Salt Lake and I started driving through the incredible mountains toward Grand Teton. Our drive, about 6 hours total, was our first grand adventure. We drove in and out of Wyoming, driving along the western border of the state. We cut back into Utah and into Idaho sporadically - it was super hilarious because I was really excited and awake and screaming with intensity while everyone else was napping. It was a fun drive to say the least. We actually ended up in the MIDDLE of a cattle herding. WE WERE ACTUALLY COWBOYS! Cowboys were riding around on horses by our car as cattle swarmed around us on the highway. It was truly epic. Hysterical moments include a bunch of cows shitting/pissing right in front of our car, on calf FACE PLANTING in front of us, and me saying "I think we're helping!" to one of the cowboys (cowgirl actually). Apparently we should have driven right through with no regard for the cow/horse/herding dogs' well-being. It was a fun little adventure.

Hahaha look at how excited I am

We later had a superb breakfast at "Bubba's BBQ" (how could we not?!) - great biscuits, gravy, bacon, etc. Our last stop before the park was to go to an Avis at the Jackson airport to replace our faulty GPS. It was giving us shit all morning.

So when we finally drove into the park and passed by the entrance sign, the hill next to us abruptly ended and the Tetons suddenly came into view and they were INSANE. Seriously, every time I looked at them I was in awe, because they are among the most beautiful things I've ever seen. I was literally screaming at the top of my lungs. I must have looked like a crazy person. I mention it later in the journal, but this moment is among my favorite on the trip. It was just so "THIS ROAD TRIP IS GOING TO BE AWESOME STARTINGGGGGG... NOW." It was a perfect way to start the trip: me screaming from excitement from the awesome and intense view that was shoved in my face.

I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the extreme awesomeness of these freaking mountains.

After calming down and setting up our tent, we decided to go for a hike to the Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point (how can you pass up a place called "Inspiration Point?" It basically says "this view is going to be awesome. come look or you are an idiot."), on the other side of Lake Jenny (we were camped at Lake Jenny: right at the foot of most of the Teton mountains). Alex, Scott and I hiked around the lake while Nadkarni, still not 100% from ACL surgery, opted to take the boat shuttle over. We came across some chipmonks and marmots and eventually, after hiking through a ton of snow (IN JUNE), we came to the Hidden Falls. They were really amazing, but at this point, the immensity (hahaha I just tried using the word "immenseness" and learned that it actually isn't a word at all. Fail.) of the Grand Teton mountains might already have me overwhelmed.

Alex and Nads went back down to take the boat over, so Scott and I decided to hang back and bushwack our way to Inspiration Point (the bridges to get to it were closed. Pffftt, like that would stop us). It was fairly easy actually, so we took our standard "jumping" pictures amidst an awesome view. Yes, I managed to pull a hip flexor jumping. We then made our way back down, where we saw a MOOSE right next to the trail. I found it and warned everyone behind us on the trail to stfu as I excitedly took as many pictures as physically possible. It LOOKED at me! It was amazing. That was the highlight of my day - the first moose I've ever seen in the wild. Possibly the first moose I've ever seen. I'm not sure how I managed to extract myself from that situation without shitting my pants.

OMG MOOSE!

Making it back to the campground, I figured it was immediately time for another adventure (obviously). So I hustled everyone into the car for a lovely scenic drive. We saw some caribou (I actually think it turned out to be elk. We saw about a billion elk in Yellowstone, so it's not all that crazy) as we stopped at a few overlooks, including a stop over Lake Jenny. I walked into the water for a bit, but it was 42 degrees F, so my feet were numb for a while.

That water is so fucking cold

Regardless, we continued on to drive to the summit of Signal Mountain. It was a gorgeous, spectacular view of the Teton mountains and the nearly unending valley on our other side. We even saw some buffalo! (It was really far away, so it doesn't count in my book). Then we took a few graphic photos consisting of a lake that definitely, definitely looked like a penis, and drove back down the mountain. However! We saw a GRIZZLY BEAR on the ride back down. Just for a moment, and the pictures we took aren't great, but it was an enormous bear. It fled down the mountainside before I was able to leap out of the car to give murderous chase. My adrenaline was going like crazy. We saw more huge caribou (most likely elk), but whatever. Grizzly Bear! Holy freaking crap. It was the real deal. Fuck.

Penis Lake. If that's not it's actual name, it should be.

Anyway, we made it back to camp to put some warm clothes on (it is freezing as I write this now! I've got a winter hat, sweatshirt, and gloves on!), start a fire, and begin making dinner. We had baked beans (duh), canned vegetables, and bratwurst (yep. Two bratwurst nights in a row. Deal with it). We also enjoyed some fantastic Utah beers. That basically brings me to right now. I grabbed the food up on my frisbee/plate, looked at the mountains during a cloudy sunset (still awesome), and am about to partake in some much needed sleep.