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| Painted Pots at Yellowstone |
I just want to start this post by saying that one of my goals on this trip was to see a moose…..to be continued.
Our trek from Dillon started with a trip to Yellowstone Bear World which meant we had to go back into Idaho. This place was the epitome of Griswald’s Family Vacation! We hauled us and our camper through Bear World with both kids sitting up front with us (you can only drive 3-5 mph) looking out the windows at bears, elk, deer, and birds (which seemed to impress Eli the most). We had black bears and grizzlies coming right up to our car. They said “please leave your windows rolled up when you get to the bear section” – no problem! When you have a bear playing with your camper and/or standing so close to your bumper that you can’t drive any further you are definitely going to keep your windows rolled up!
Mary Logue was screaming and dancing and couldn’t get enough of it!
They also had a petting zoo that had deer, goats, pigs, and chickens in it so the kids enjoyed petting and feeding the animals. It’s hilarious to see a little guy feed a huge pig and laugh about it. Here's Eli feeding a fawn:
We skipped bottle feeding the bear cubs because that was just a little too touristy and Faris didn’t have on his fanny pack and tall black socks so we just couldn’t justify doing that.
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| Yellowstone |
However, we got a good start on Yellowstone. After a breakfast that got a 4 star rating on Travelocity but was very reminiscent of IHOP, we headed into Yellowstone.
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| Yellowstone |
We saw several buffalo and geysers before sticking the kids in our backpacks for a hike up to Observation Point above Old Faithful. For those of you that love Faris, you know it just kills him to do a ½ mile hike anywhere; he thinks “why bother?” but with a 1 year old and 2 year old we’re doing good to get that in. We hiked up to the point and sat down to eat our lunch for about 20 minutes before Old Faithful erupted. Pretty neat viewpoint from up there. We hiked down a different way because, again, Faris doesn’t do “out and back” hikes so we were able to see several more geysers.
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| Observation Point above Old Faithful |
We were getting ready to head out for our campground destination but called about a room at the Old Faithful Lodge just to see if there was availability. The guy in reservations said “I just had a cancellation a couple of minutes ago” and I said “Great! Good for me! How much did you say, $37? He said, “No, $237.” I thanked him and we headed out on our way to another destination! We learned along the way that basically all campgrounds and lodges in the area closed as of yesterday. Information we should have known beforehand? Nah. We drove on to Grand Teton National Park looking for lodging and kept striking our there as well. Exasperated, we did three u-turns trying to figure out which direction we should go iand ended up turning into an area that said they had lodging, food, groceries, etc. There was a restaurant there called Dorman’s which is just past the Jenny Lake Lodge that I so wanted to go to but closed yesterday. We went in and immediately got the feeling that this was a great place. We ordered a couple of beers (Snake River Ale) and a pizza and sat down to a family style table.
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| Dorman's Hootenanny |
Some folks asked us if we were staying for “Hootenanny” and we said, “Sure” having no idea what they were talking about. Come to find out it was the 8th annual Jackson Hole Hootenanny being held there which was a bunch of different live music artists playing. We were sitting as close to the stage as you could get and didn’t even know that we were about to experience such a treat!
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| Grand Teton in the background |
Our children blessed us with good behavior and we were able to sit there and drink a couple of beers and listen to live music. Everyone was so nice to us and kept playing with Eli and holding Mary Logue – we felt like locals!
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| Grand Teton |
A couple told us about a great campground down the road that wasn’t closed so we decided to try it out. One of the ladies told us where to go to see some wildlife so when the kids got squirmy we headed out on the road to Jackson. We pulled up to the road that she told us to take and it said no campers, RVs, trailers….you get the picture.
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| Again, Grand Teton - we were excited about it! |
So in typical Faris Malki fashion, we pressed on towards our campground down the road that said no campers with our camper. For those of you that love Faris, you know the rules do not apply to him. As a strict rule follower, this does not set well with me , but as of Monday we will have been married seven years so I’ve learned to just follow along with him and if he gets us in trouble he can just get us out of it himself. So, we’re heading down this road at sunset and see several people pulled over looking at something. I said, “Pull over and see what they’re looking at” and Faris said, “Nothing Ellie Jo, they’re just ‘sighting in their cameras’”. Typically I don’t argue but this time I said “Pull over!” Faris hopped out of the car then came back in a minute to get me and guess what…..
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| my moose |
a moose.
Can’t believe I got to see a moose! It is a beautiful, peaceful animal. He was just having a little sage snack as the sun was setting. So far this is our favorite memory of the trip. The sun setting behind Grand Teton while watching a moose munch on some sage. Again, who gets to see that?
We came back to the car and Eli said, “ Turn off the air so the car won’t drive away”. Dude thinks he is in charge of everything. We assured him we had it under control and continued on the road not meant for trailers towards Jackson.
We arrived at Fireside RV resort and let me tell you, this place is swanky as far as RV parks go. A lot of the ones that are this nice do not allow little old campers like ours so we weren’t sure they would let us in but it was after hours so we came in anyway. We only hesitated for a second then we saw the Astro van parked in a spot and hooked up to the electrical hookup. Huh? How do you hookup a minivan to an RV hookup? I’m looking into it and I might be a minivan convert if I figure it out.
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