Road Trip - Part 5

Well, we have made it home from our long journey. It was a wonderful vacation.


Last Thursday we arrived back at Grand Teton National Park after having spent two nights in Yellowstone National Park.


It is a beautiful place. Unfortunately, it rained most of the afternoon, so we were not able to take a scenic boat ride around the lake. When the skies did finally clear, we were able to see this view.



It the picture above, there is a moose. He is very difficult to see, but he's there.

I zoomed in on him to get a better look. We were quite excited to see a moose, and we saw several more the next day as well.




We splurged a bit on our room for the last night. We had the bottom room where Bailey is standing. When we checked in, the upstairs rooms weren't cleaned yet so we couldn't get one of them. In hindsight, we should have waited for one of those rooms.




Here's the view from our patio though. Still beautiful despite the clouds covering the tops of the mountains.



This little guy (we named him FredBob) lived outside our patio. He was fun to watch dart around.

Here's a bird that was in the valley.

When the sun was setting it was a magical place. I stood outside forever wishing a bear would walk by. There are lots of bear sightings in this area, but we were never lucky enough to see one.

This is the outside of the Jackson Lake Lodge. This faces the valley in the picture above. We had the best dinner there that night.

Still no bear. Darn.

So, we are now home. I am slowly working through mounds of laundry and I am facing going back to work tomorrow.

Here's some random thoughts from our trip. Hopefully this will be helpful to someone else.

• If you go to Yellowstone, book a room early. I booked our rooms back in January and my choices were limited back then. Same thing with the Grand Tetons.
• There are no televisions or internet service in Yellowstone. I'm fine with that, but I had told my boss that I would check in with work occasionally - which required internet service. I'm not complaining, it's just something you should be aware of.
• There was only internet service at the Grand Teton Lodge - not in the rooms. Also, no television available.
• Make your dinner reservations early as well. I was aware of this and made our dinner reservations about two months ago and even then I only had the choice of 5:45 or 9:00pm. People who did not have a reservation were turned away. There are "fast-food" type places available, but you will most likely have that for lunch so a nice dinner was welcomed. And it was a really nice dinner both nights. We were very surprised at how good the food was at the two different places we ate dinner at in Yellowstone.
• If you go to the Grand Tetons - I recommend you splurge on a room with a view - and on a dinner at the Mural Room which overlooks the valley. No matter how much I like nature - I am very well aware that I also like to be spoiled.
• One thing that Rominal would have liked to do differently was to not have to change hotel rooms so often. Because we drove from Texas to Wyoming and then back, we stopped a lot along the way. This meant that we were unloading and loading all of our suitcases each night. Rominal would prefer to fly to our next destination and stay in one place for more than one night.
• No matter how surly your teenage daughter is at home, she becomes charming and personable again once she is out of the state. She even would let me put my arm around her as we were walking - something that would never be allowed at home. This trip helped us connect again if only for a week.

I'm already thinking of next year's trip. I'm thinking of something along the lines of flying out to Yosemite National Park and renting a RV and driving all around there, but Rominal is thinking of something more along the lines of Disney World.

I want more nature and he wants more lights.

Can this marriage be saved?