National Parks of the Rockies

After leaving Karen’s house in Monument, CO, we headed north with hopes of keeping our original summer plans of seeing some national parks. After looking at potential paths to Grand Teton National Park, we determined it would be a shame to skip Rocky Mountain National Park given how close we were. With that in mind, our first stop would be Estes Park, CO.

Rocky Mountain National Park

We booked two nights at Elk Meadow RV Resort, located just a few miles from the park entrance on route 36. We checked in on Tuesday, May 26 and the park’s reopening was scheduled for the 27th. This would be the second national park that we visited on their first day of operation after the Covid-19 shutdowns. Some research on what to do for a one day stop in the park yielded a hike starting at Bear Lake that would have us visiting several small lakes in the high altitudes of the Rockies.

Unlike our visit to Bryce Canyon NP, Rocky Mountain NP was collecting entrance fees at the gate. This wasn’t a problem for us because we always carry a national parks pass. We approached the gate at about 7:30 AM and there was a line and a news crew covering the reopening of the park. The ride into the parking lot near Bear Lake was gorgeous and full of hairpin turns. There were quite a few cars at the popular parking lot but still plenty of space. They were definitely busier than Bryce NP was on its opening day. According to visitation data, Rocky Mountain NP is 3rd among national parks for annual visitors. Only Great Smoky Mountains NP and Grand Canyon NP get more visitors.

We decided to go clockwise on our loop and after a short side trip to the shore of Bear Lake ,we commenced our hike. The trail varied from heavy snow cover of up to 2 feet to dry with no sign of snow around. This variability was due to tree cover and whether the trail had any southern exposure. The first highlight of the hike was Alberta Falls. Given the large amount of runoff from the melting snow, there was a lot of water flowing. We aren’t sure how much the flow drops in the summer.

The views were spectacular as we continued along the trail, working our way toward The Loch, our next mountain lake. The elevation here was over 10,000 feet and the snow was still pretty deep around the lake. There were several other hikers enjoying the lake, including several that had made the trek to try their hand at fishing the lake.

When we returned to the main loop of the hike to continue on, we discovered the trail to be completely impassable due to snow. It was clear that no one had hiked on this section of the trail and it took us 20 minutes to travel a couple hundred yards. We decided it wasn’t wise to continue the loop and decided to turn around and retrace our steps back to Bear Lake the way we came. As it was, we hiked a total of 8.7 miles. Given the altitude and the occasional trek through snow, it was quite a workout. Even though we only had one day in the park, we feel we made the most of it. We will definitely have to return someday.

Grand Teton National Park

We made two stops getting from Rocky Mountain National Park to Grand Teton National Park.  First we spent two nights in Rawlings, WY where we found some brisket that we planned to turn into pastrami.  Before leaving Rawlings, we got the brisket into its brine for 5 days.  From Rawlings, we drove to a KOA in Dusbois, WY.  One really wants to pronounce this the French way but in Wyoming is it is Dew-boyz.  From here, we took one full day to drive over to Grand Teton to look for boondocking options.  We didn’t find any we were comfortable with but the Gros Ventre Campground in the park (first come-first serve) looked good and wasn’t too busy.  We ended up moving here for 7 nights.

Dan had done some research on good photography locations, and as suspected, early morning was necessary to get the proper lighting and calm winds for water reflections.  The first location was Schwabacher Landing where the river is slow moving and offered nice views of the mountains.  We opted to go here on our first full day and followed up the stop with a hike around Jenny Lake.  The loop hike around the lake included a stop at Hidden Falls.  During normal operating times, one can take a boat from the Jenny Lake Visitors Center to a dock near the falls for a much shorter hike.  This isn’t what we do so even if the boat was operating, we wouldn’t have taken it.  This hike was around 9 miles and we saw some young moose during the first mile or so of the hike.

While driving to the Jenny Lake, we noticed the bike trail that parallels the road going into the park.  We decided that would be a great ride and we had to do it.  The next morning, Dan got up early to go over to the famous Mormon Row to get morning pictures of the barn.  Once he was done with his early morning outing, he returned to the campground to eat breakfast and pick up Amy and the bikes for our ride into Jenny Lake.   This was a very pleasant out and back ride for a total of about 20 miles.  There is nothing quite like riding along on your bike and looking to the side and seeing the majestic Teton Mountains right there.  It was gorgeous.  On the return ride, Dan noticed some flowers near the trail that would make an awesome foreground for a photo, so he had to stop and use his iPhone to get a picture.  It came out beautifully.

On our third day in the campground, it was time to smoke the pastrami that we started brining while in Rawlings.  This would take most of the day so we stayed in the campground for the day.  The resulting pastrami was (is) delicious as we continue to eat on it.  The forecast for the weekend was beginning to look pretty nasty so we decided to drive into lower Yellowstone of Friday and at least see Old Faithful go off.  We left early in the morning so that Dan could get more early morning mountain reflections in the Snake River.  This time the pictures were taken at Ox Bow Bend (see featured photo for this post).  Once the morning shoot was over, we headed north through the remainder of the park and into Yellowstone.

We spent most of this trip into Yellowstone around Old Faithful and the geyser basin that surrounds it.  We walked the boardwalk here where a multitude of geysers that vary in their frequency of eruption.  The weather was gorgeous and the walk was fascinating.  We ate our lunch on the tailgate of the truck while watching people attempt to fly fish in the river.  We knew we’d be spending several more days in Yellowstone (weather permitting) and were looking forward to it.  For now, we had to be satisfied with our experience at Old Faithful and take that long drive back to Gros Ventre campground.  

The weekend weather did indeed turn out to be less then ideal but we did manage to drive into Jackson and visit the shops.  One shop was associated with a toy store that had the Lego 5th wheel camper that Dan has been looking for since Christmas.  We knew we were in for a couple of rainy (dare we say snowy) days so we had to buy it.  We ended up putting it together on Sunday during the cold and wet weather.  It was a nice distraction.

We left on Monday, June 8th and the weather was not as bad as predicted.  Let’s just say there wasn’t any snow on the ground and there wasn’t any in the air either.  We managed to drive through Grand Teton and Yellowstone with the 5th wheel and tow without incident.  We setup camp in Henrys Lake State Park in Idaho, about 15 miles from the western entrance to Yellowstone National Park. 

Yellowstone National Park

If you are ever looking for a place to setup camp for exploring Yellowstone, we highly recommend Henrys Lake State Park in Idaho. Even though we only spent our evenings in the campground, the location was ideal. The lake is home to various water fowl and the osprey were diving into the water, attempting to catch fish. We were 15 minutes from the western entrance to Yellowstone and managed to get into the park bright and early to track down some wildlife.

If you want to increase your chances of seeing wildlife other than the bison, which are almost as common as pigeons in Central Park, the experts say to visit either Hayden Valley or Lamar Valley. Both of these locations are on the eastern side of the park so we had some driving to do in order to get there. We decided to visit Hayden Valley on day one and the Lamar Valley on day two and, based on our experience, create an itinerary for day three after the first two days were complete.

On our first morning outing to get to Hayden Valley, we encountered our first of several famous Yellowstone bison traffic jams. This one was caused by a herd that had been hanging out along the western entrance road. This herd contained many young bison that were still nursing and one hungry fellow insisted that mommy stop in the middle of the road so he could nurse. Not something you come across in too many places outside of Yellowstone.

When traveling through these valleys, it’s easy to know when there is wildlife to be seen. Just look for all the cars pulled over on the side of the road and people standing with cameras equipped with gigantic lenses supported by tripods. Dan thought his 200-500 mm zoom was big, but these Yellowstone wildlife photographers take it to a whole new level. Our first such encounter was shortly after we enter Hayden Valley and the subject of interest turned out to be part of the local pack of wolves. This was a treat because of all the wildlife one hopes to see in Yellowstone, the wolves are the rarest encounters. The wolves were a bit out of reach for the 500mm lens Dan had, but he did manage to get a few shots as they tried to cross the road and rejoin the rest of the pack.

Other than the plethora of bison and an occasional prong horn, the wolves were all we saw in Hayden Valley. We turned around and headed back north to check out the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone for some landscape photography and a little bit of hiking. The scenery here was gorgeous and we would have done a longer hike had we not left the bear spray in the truck. We decided it wasn’t worth the risk to go deeper into the woods without it, even if we were on an established trail. After a couple short hikes around the river and the waterfalls, we resumed our drive back towards West Yellowstone.

When we reached the Norris intersection, we decided to stop and check out the Norris Geyser Basin before returning to the campground. The basin has two boardwalk loops and we did one of them and a portion of the second before we decided we’d had enough walking for the day so we headed back. The herd that caused our morning delay was grazing in a large field shortly after turning onto the road to West Yellowstone so we stoped to get a few more pictures. Like we said, the bison in Yellowstone does not appear to have a population issue.

Day two of Yellowstone had us taking the long drive over to the Lamar Valley. We got up even earlier to try and get there while it was still early in the day. As soon as we entered the valley, we spotted a group of people watching some black bears. We stopped for a while and took some pictures before heading on. We quickly came across our second bison traffic jam. This one was sad as one of the bison was clearly injured or maybe just old as he favored his right front leg. His slow progress made this jam last a bit longer.

Once through the herd, we traveled another few miles before seeing a large group of cars pulled over. As we slowed to look around, Dan saw what everyone was interested in – grizzly bears! We pulled over as soon as we could and while Dan was getting his camera out, one of the bears stood on his hind legs to check out the crowd. Unfortunately we did not get a picture of that but did get several of the mommy bear and her two offspring that were definitely in their second year.

While taking pictures of the grizzlies, a woman informed us of a wolf den with cubs off a side road we passed. We decided to go check it out. Upon arrival, we learned that the den was off in the distance and about the only way to see them was with a spotting scope (time to go shopping!). While trying to get a glimpse of the wolf cubs, we did see a badger that was wandering around.

We left the area of the wolf den to head back through Mammoth Hot Springs, where we stopped for lunch and a hike around the boardwalk touring the hot springs. By the time we were done here, we were pretty exhausted and decided to drive back to the campground early and take a scenic route that would bring us by Earthquake Lake.

After two days of getting up at the crack of dawn, we decided to sleep in a little and spend day three checking out some natural landscapes that we hadn’t seen yet. First on the docket was a trip to see the Grand Prismatic Spring that is best viewed from an overlook reached via a short hike. While doing this, we decided to complete the grand loop to check out West Thumb and Lake Village. One advantage of this decision was we would get to drive through the gorgeous Hayden Valley one more time. As we entered Hayden Valley, we got the opportunity to see some male elk as they grazed in the field. Even though they lose their antler each winter, one elder male was already sporting an impressive rack. The ranger standing nearby (there is usually a ranger at each gathering of wildlife watchers to make sure no one does something stupid) said this was exceptionally large and should be quite impressive by fall.

We definitely made the most of our three full days camped outside of Yellowstone and will plan to return in the future for an even longer stay. For now we are heading into Montana, where we will take a couple weeks to make our way to Glacier National Park for some more adventures.

Additional Pictures

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

•