Yellowstone National Park, Part 2

For those who know me, one of the best parts of taking trips is the planning part. I had typically found that half the fun for me is in the planning and half the fun is the trip itself. While it has its pros and cons and while allowing myself some flexibility when setting up my vacations, I am generally always booking my rooms or campsites ahead of time so that I don’t have to spend any of the actual vacation time looking at hotels or other places to stay.

Given the late nature of getting to schedule this particular vacation (I was approved to take the trip two days prior to leaving and immediately began booking my overnight stays), I left after work on Thursday knowing I had three nights with nowhere specific to stay. All three nights were planned as camping out nights, but I was finding out that all of the campsites were either sold out or non-reservable. 

The first one of those three nights came on Friday night at Badlands National Park and was pleasantly surprised to find they had at least a dozen spots remaining to camp out. The weather was nice at night and I was excited that the rest of the trip would work out just great. But while I was sitting back enjoying nature that night and looking to see what the temperature was at that moment, I noticed it was going to be up to 103 degrees on Saturday in western South Dakota and was going to drop to the low 20’s with snow in northwestern Wyoming by Monday.

I immediately realized I was willing to sleep indoors rather than my tent that night and since I hadn’t booked anything, I immediately took some time to find a place. I booked what I thought was a room at a lodge or maybe even a small cabin and I continued my trip without a second thought about it.

Fast forward to the afternoon of Labor Day when the snow began to set in and I trekked south and then slightly east to Moran, where it was raining more than snowing and was getting progressively colder. And when I got there, I discovered I was going to be staying in a covered wagon for the night. The upside, however, is that I was going to have four heaters in the wagon. The downside turned out to be that the door wouldn’t zip up all the way and the window next to the bed wouldn’t zip up at all.

I put on all the long-sleeve shirts I brought with me, put on two pairs of pajama pants and my lone pair of sweatpants and then added a jacket and every blanket I could find (and the sleeping bag I had brought). I shivered my way to sleep and eventually woke up around 4ish that morning with no intention of sticking around. While struggling in a “room” that had a temperature in the 20s to get my belongings packed and into the rental car, I took a couple of pics of my surroundings and headed off to Grand Teton National Park and a final journey through a section of Yellowstone National Park to get to the next destination.

While most of my snow day pics were attributed to Yellowstone National Park, many of them were actually taken in Grand Teton. I arrived prior to the actual opening of the park (gates are always open apparently), and I discovered early and often that snow pics are the best pics. And on top of the incredible views I was able to experience, I even had an opportunity to see a bear on the road pick up a pylon and throw it down. When I drove past (no stopping!), I saw there were a couple of other bears a few feet into the woods.

Once through Grand Teton and with snow still on the ground, I continued north to Yellowstone and revisited a couple of places I had seen the day before when I didn’t have a winter background for my pics. I was definitely grateful for the scenery and especially the timing that allowed me to experience autumn and winter in a few hours in one of the most amazing natural places I have ever visited.