Thursday, June 24, 2010

3,000 miles down

Our trip across North America has been great so far - we drive until we are tired find a campsite in our AAA book and then go and set up camp. That all ended when we got to Yellowstone!!! The first night we got one of the last camping sites on the West end - that should have clued us in. Well after a day of seeing some of the most amazing sites ever we could not find a single place to stay. No joke!! Seriously all campsites were full and hotels trust me I asked and tried to get us in a few. So we drove an extra 50 miles decided we would spend the night in a hotel since it would be closer to 9pm when we finally got somewhere, well 50 miles out of Yellowstone all hotels, B&B's and other such things were full and luckily we found a campsite that had a few tent sites left. So at 9:30 at night we set up our tent and went to sleep. This morning we woke up to a FREE PANCAKE breakfast at the campsite!!
Glacier National Park was great but the weather stunk so we didn't stay too long, just long enough to get a hike in and see St. Mary's falls.
Yellowstone National Park - AMAZING! We had great weather and Molly didn't hate us for going in and out of the car for 13 hours. We did a few short hikes and saw most of the major sites, which is good since we are now 50 miles outside the park and well from the east side that is 100 miles to the nearest site at Yellowstone so we won't be going back. We are going to take a leisurely drive to Mt. Rushmore and make sure to get our campsite early!!


St. Mary's Falls, Glacier National Park
The entrance for Yellowstone National Park
Look dad some more geysers - the ground is smoking!
Old Faithful - it was amazing!! What I didn't realize is that there are over 100 other geysers that go off during our hiking - pretty cool.
Family photo at Yellowstone. The sun in the lower 48 is much stronger than what is was in Alaska!! After only a few hours outside we all came away with some pretty bad burns - we already have sunscreen on for today. Can't wait to get in the car and start our drive!!

2 comments:

Carrie said...

Ashley,
What an exciting time for your family! I hope you enjoy Mt. Rushmore and your time in SD! It is a great state if I do say so myself! Keystone is a great town and I know there are a lot of campsites right around there. Keystone is only 3 miles from Mt. R. Hope you have fun!

Tara said...

Molly has amazing parents! I love that she is a traveler :) You inspire me! Hope everything in the new home is getting homey and you are settling in. :) Wish we could have seen ya'll in Waco when we were up there too. We miss ya'll!