Yellowstone | Not a Perfect Knowledge

Well I made it through another semester, another year. Its been a great one, full of surprises, tears, and memories. Here is my year in review; month by month. (links to other posts included for further reading).

January- I celebrated my birthday in the mission with my “hija”.

February- I served in Suncuan ward in the Atiquizaya stake, and went to see “Los Ausoles” as a zone activity.

March- I helped plan a talent show ward activity, and I changed areas to the Centro ward in Santa Ana.

April- We had two mission temple trips and brought the Familia Morán, I also experienced my first “quinceñera” party.

May- We went on a beautiful adventure with the Familia Melendez to cerro verde, and Raul got Baptized as my mission miracle.

June- I finished my 18 months as a missionary and flew back home to Chicago to see my family.

July- Sheldon and I reunited in Chicago after being apart for 2 years (too long) and I started a internship job as a research and development scientist at Now Foods. I also went to help at Girls camp for a day.

August- Our family went on a vacation to California; Yosemite, San Francisco, and Monterey.

September- My dad helped me move into my new apartment in Rexburg and school began. Sheldon and I did some fun hikes.

October- Dad, Mckinsey, Sheldon and I all met up for general conference. We also carved pumpkins, went to a Lindsey Sterling Concert, went shooting… And my favorite: took a day trip to Yellowstone.

November- Sheldon and I celebrated 2.5 years together, went iceskating, I had a mission reunion, My parents came to visit for the weekend, I went to the Lloyds for Thanksgiving, We took a trip to Utah to see the lights.

December- I took part in a live nativity as a shepherd girl, and Sheldon proposed! I also finished my fall semester finals and flew home to Chicago to spend christmas with my family.

So its been on our bucket-list for awhile, and we needed to make it happen before the park was closed for the season. We decided to make Yellowstone a group adventure. I had tried all week to coordinate rides and times and people with everything but it was just one impossible logic problem. It just couldn’t work for all of us to leave at the same time as a big group (like 18 of us) so we had a staggered schedule. My group left at 7:00 a.m. but we still had the goal to all meet up with everyone at Old Faithful at 3:00 p.m. as the last destination before leaving the park.

I was able to bring my dad’s old camera to play around with. It was a fun place to practice photography, that’s for sure. So everything on this blog post (except for the map- thank you google) is taken from Dad’s Nikon, or Sheldon’s phone.

We drove in through West Yellowstone and followed the main red circle path (on the map where it says “Yellowstone” in green) up then around to finish up at Old Faithful. Fun fact is that there were 3 states involved in this trip (Idaho, Montana, Wyoming).

First Views of the park- through the West Entrance:

Not long after paying the entrance fee we saw a herd of elk off to the side of the road, one really big one with quite the impressive antlers, well of corse we parked and walked over to take a picture. While walking back to the car we realized that there was one elk right there in the parking lot! SO close! I knew it would be a good day!

Stop Number 1: Natural Hot Pools

Okay this place was a nice first destination. The lighting was perfect and there weren’t any other tourists there but us. I love the fact that we came in October, I was able to capture some beautiful muted natural tones.

Stop Number 2: Gibbon Falls

Okay this place was beautiful! It was just right off the road, there was a little walkway; but come on, people will hike for days to see this stuff. So good. This is nature at it’s finest. Also, selfies with a real camera are hard… But you can’t exactly take a bad picture of this place!

Stop Number 3: Norris Geyser Basin Hike

This is just the towards the parking lot, we did a good portion of this hike though to see the geyser basin.

Heavenly Father is the best artist, I mean look at His creations. Nature is so cool. I took some “Dad inspired pictures” of different paths around the park, and also paid close attention to the different textures.

We also found this pretty little lake off the beaten path.

Next Stop: Upper Falls

This is the place. I remember this beautiful sight very clearly from my family vacation back in 2007. Pictures really do NOT catch the awe factor. The sun is starting to shine pretty bright here though so some shadows are dramatic. Sheldon said that if he didn’t see a “yellowstone” he was going to sue… haha, good thing we made it this far. The park lived up to its name.

And the (partial) group photo:

Along the drive to the next spot we pulled over a few times for some classic Yellowstone photo-ops like these. We also saw a baby bear, but I didn’t get out of the car. Let’s remember this is October, it is getting pretty cold here.

Next stop: Snack break at the Bridge Bay pull off.

I loved seeing the variety here, all different landscapes in one park! Its really amazing. The sand here is made up different rocks, I personally like the black sand from volcanic rock. Also lets just appreciate the crackle texture on this old log. The friendly bird was workin’-it like he wanted to become famous.

Animal Sightings: Baby bear, elk, bison, squirrel, friendly fuzzy birds, and big ugly black birds….

Surreal landscape of Yellowstone Lake.

Last Stop: Castle Geyser and Old Faithful

We didn’t really plan ahead too well because we only brought snack foods expecting there to be a place to eat along the way… Well now we know that there are places, but they aren’t open for off-season. Upon arrival we saw the very end of the eruption of Old Faithful… we missed it. Well because it is SO iconic, and important to everyone to see, we waited another hour to be able to watch Old Faithful go off. So while waiting we walked through the gift shop, and the little museum, then decided to walk the loop to see other smaller geysers. Luckily we were able to watch Castle Geyser.

Old Faithful was a little late, not sure of that means he’s unfaithful or what…. but the miracle was that the timing worked out so that I could see everyone of our giant group at the Old Faithful Geyser at 4:00. We all met up for a few minutes, perfect!