Grand Teton National Park

 Tuesday August 24th - We drove from Yellowstone to the Tetons (1hr 45 min, 76 miles).  We stopped at Jenny Lake, on the way to our Tetons campground, since the girls had given Kevin a Kayak rental for his birthday.  The parking lot was very crowded, so we expected a wait for a kayak, but looks like you can do lots of hikes around Jenny Lake, so it wasn't all that crowded at the kayak rental.  We rented a tandem kayak for an hour and paddled across the lake and then came back along the shore.  Was a beautiful paddle beneath the Teton peaks.  We did a short bike ride from the Jenny Lake parking lot, there are really nice asphalt bike trails throughout the park.  Then we headed to our campground, Gros Ventre.  It is just south of Moose, and is quite convenient to Jackson and to most places in the park.  The sites are nicely spaced out and our campsite looks out toward the river.  The road to the campground seems to be a popular spot for moose sightings.  We saw a Mom and her calf one time and a bull moose the next time.

Campsite at Gros Ventre Campground

Birthday Boy...thank goodness he's no longer in his 50's

Wednesday August 25th - We had a lazy morning at the campground, then drove to Mormon Row,which was a community of Mormon homesteaders in the 1890s.  These Mormons had set off from Salt Lake City looking for areas to establish new communities to support their growing population.   We walked around a bit, and had lunch in the parking lot, with a beautiful view of the mountains.  In the afternoon we drove our bikes part way to Jackson and rode on the bike trail into Jackson.  We walked around a bit and bought baseball hats and a t-shirt for Kev...happy birthday!

Iconic T.A. Moulton Barn on Mormon Row

We were lucky, today wasn't very "smoky"

Snake River in front of the mountains

Bike trail to Jackson

There are 4 arches made of elk antlers at each corner of the Jackson town square

The sidewalks in downtown Jackson are all made of wooden planks.  

We rode our bikes to the field next to the entrance to our campground and watched the sunset over the mountains.

Thursday, August 26th - We rode our bikes from the campground to Mormon Row, was only 4 miles away, on a bumpy dirt road, it was a nice quiet ride.  We walked around the other part of Mormon Row, (a few more houses and barns) and then headed up Antelope Flats Rd.  We thought we could take another dirt road that would cut back to Mormon Row, but found after riding 1-2 miles down the bumpy road that it dead ended into a stream.  We had to turn around and ride back up it (uphill) to Antelope Flats.  This was a paved road and not very busy, but was more miles than we had anticipated for the ride.  We road through the town of Kelly and found a small shop that had wonderful root beer floats that we ate on the porch, with of course another beautiful view.  Today was much smokier than the last few days, and a bit cloudy, but still pretty.  Then we went into Jackson for some WiFi, and drove to Jackson Hole (about 15 min from Jackson).  There wasn't much to see there, but there is another nice bike trail between the two.

The road to nowhere!

 

Cody Wyoming & Yellowstone National Park

Sunday August 22nd - We drove to Cody WY (7 hours, 425 miles) walked around town for a bit, then went to a local park to cook dinner.  Then took a nice walk along the Snake River.  The Cody Rodeo is every night all summer and only $25.  We had gone twice the year we came to Wyoming to the UXU dude ranch (we were happy to see the UXU was still open, as we drove from Cody to Yellowstone). The rodeo was just as much fun as we had remembered.  After the rodeo we stayed overnight at the Cody Walmart.  It was the most crowded Walmart parking lot we've ever seen.  

The kids ran after the calf. trying to pull the rope from its tail, just like when we came with the UXU ranch.  The girls had gone down to join in, but Meg lost a boot out there in all the mud, and needed help getting it back on.  It was especially muddy this time, and there were a lot of boots that got lost!

Calf roping

Monday August 23rd - morning we got a few things from Walmart including a bathroom scale ($8) and some food. We drove from Cody to Yellowstone (1 hour, 50 miles). We took a video of Old faithful, rode our bikes to the morning glory and hiked to the grand prismatic overlook. We stayed in Yellowstone park at Grants Village. The sign said the campsite was full, but Kev went in to ask anyway and they said they just had a cancellation.  Not the best campground, kinda tight but was convenient to central Yellowstone.  Our. neighbors invited us over to share their fire for a few hours.

On our drive from Cody to Yellowstone, we were happy to see that the UXU was still around!

We hiked the storm point trail

Rode our bikes on the path to Morning Glory and saw lots of geysers on the way.  Was about a 2 mile path to morning glory

Morning Glory

We stuck around to see Old Faithful. Here is a ~2 minute video.

Lookout over Grand Prismatic.  Was a long walk to get there (maybe 1.5 miles) but worth it!

The Badlands

Saturday August 21st - We drove from Stickney to the Badlands National Park(3 hr, 207 miles).  We hiked the Notch Trail which requires climbing up a wooden ladder, and then along a narrow cliff trail.  The scariest part was coming down the wooden ladder backward.  We were so glad we waited in line for the hike up the ladder, so fun!  We walked a few of the short boardwalk trails, and then did the Castle trail, which was a nice hike that wasn't very crowded.  We left the Badlands through the Pinnacles Entrance and drove down Rt 240 to the gravel road on the right (with 2 antenae on the hill) to "The Wall", BLM dispersed camping.  There were quite a few campers along this cliff.  We got there about mid afternoon and were able to find a good spot on the edge, and stayed one night. Since it's outside of the National Park, Kevin was able to get some drone footage.  We enjoyed sitting in front of the RV looking out at the beautiful view all evening.  We spotted some mountain goats off on the next mountain.  In the morning we woke up to 3 mountain goats on the cliff below our window.  We watched them for probably an hour and took way too many photos of them.  Such a great spot, we will definitely be staying here any time we are driving through South Dakota.

 

A really bad view of Jen going up the ladder on the Notch Trail :(

Notch Trail

Castle Trail

One of the many lookouts in the Badlands

Most of the pics of our campsite, don't do justice to the cliff in front of our RV.  Just beyond the shadow, is cliff.  We took lots of pics and drone video of this epic spot...

Our neighbor snapped a pic for us in front of Tiny

The sunset was to our backs, but we enjoyed the full moon over the badlands

beautiful sunrise

Can't ever get enough pics of our RV 

Some mountain goats visited us early in the morning

Stickney (What a Suprise)

Friday Aug 20 - After leaving the corn palace we drove to Stickney SD (30 min, 30 miles) and stayed in a free city park. The site had electric and free firewood. We ate at the 261 diner. We split a burger, fries and a chocolate shake. We took a few drone videos of the campsite. We had a little fire. 

view from the diner