Favorite National Park you have visited

[dnc]

I'll try and keep my Yellowstone recap a bit shorter. This was my fourth time at Yellowstone but my first time a. without my crazy Mom (RIP) who had a massive meltdown each of the first three times we were there b. staying overnight. We drove up through Grand Teton and through the John D Rockefeller Parkway and arrived in Yellowstone pretty late in the day - a bit before 8pm maybe. The first surprise highlight was Lake Lewis which was still frozen over, Ive only ever seen one frozen lake in person before and that was really more of a pond. Frozen Lake Lewis was really spectacular.

We continued northbound to the "8" then headed northwest to Old Faithful where we had a cabin for the night. It was dark by the time we got there so we didn't see much else on the way in but the cabin was pretty nice. I was braced for it to be a dump since it was only $116. The key here was we booked it almost a full year out, these places fill up quickly.

The next morning we called my pops, the kids chanted "We saw a bear before you did, we saw a bear before you did", we all had a great laugh. Personal highlight of the trip for me. Then we set out to see Yellowstone. First thing we did was walk over to see Old Faithful and we literally walked right past it. Had no idea the cabins were so extremely close to it. Once we found out where it was we walked back, found a spot on the benches and waited. I'd seen OF a couple of times before but with my parents we were always in a rush so we saw it behind a behind a mass of people. This time we had front row seats which was really cool.

After Old Faithful and a stop at the VC to get the passport stamps and junior ranger books (huge hits btw if you have kids I highly recommend both) (btw Yellowstone is the only park I've visited that charges for Junior Ranger books) we hit the van to drive around the park. Yellowstone is massive so even though it was only like 10 in the morning at this point we had a long day ahead of us. We stopped to see Grand Prismatic Spring, Mammoth Hot Springs (and ate lunch in Mammoth), had a mostly uneventful drive through the Lamar Valley with not nearly as much wildlife as we expected but we were there in the dead middle of the day so that didn't help, then hit the first of the three significant waterfalls, Tower Fall.



Turning south on the figure eight we hit Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone then continued southward back towards the Tetons.

We saw tons of bison of course and a few elk with some up pretty close, but the big wildlife highlight was a black bear that we saw along with only 2 or 3 other vehicles (Yellowstone is known for massive wildlife traffic jams) and not real far off the road. I think it was between east of Mammoth but before the Lamar Valley but I am not even 100% sure where it was. But regardless, after having seen the 4 grizz the day before we were feeling pretty blessed at this point.

 

[YellowSnow]

So for context we spent 41 days on the road and I think ended up seeing bits and pieces of 21 American National Parks plus one primary Canadian park (Banff) plus sort of passing through about 3 other Canadian parks. Big quantity over quality trip, we wanted to see as much as possible. It was the wife, myself and three kids, then aged 7, 6 and 2. We put almost 12,000 miles on the minivan round trip. Left Memphis day before Memorial Day, spent about 12 days getting to Seattle (up through TN, AR, MO, KS, started site seeing in Colorado, NW Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Alberta and BC), 8 days in Seattle, a couple nights on the Oly peninsula, and another 20 days getting home (through Oregon, California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, then basically done siteseeing and just hustling back through NE NM, TX panhandle, OK, AR, and TN to home).

Rocky Mountain Parks

Grand Teton: We sadly didn't have much time set aside for Grand Teton, it was kind of just a "passing through" station for us. One of the big goals of this trip was to see as much wildlife as possible for the kids (the older two had Bingo sheets made up with 25 animals each they had selected that they were hoping to see on the trip and the first one to fill their sheet up first won - this was both brilliant and a little too brilliant. At one point we saw a humpback whale and my then 7 year old shrugged because it wasn't on his list). With wildlife a big goal we targeted a lot more tim in Yellowstone than Grand Teton. I can't reiterate strongly enough how big of a mistake this was.

So Grand Teton...holy shit! I knew the mountains were spectittilytacular. We had been there a couple times as kids and my little brother and I called them the Grand Tittytons because that's what middle school boys do. Little did we know how historically accurate our horniness was but I digress. I did not realize what a wildlife sanctuary this place was. We passed through on our way into Yellowstone and came across a massive bunch of cars parked hastily on both sides of the road. We knew something big was up. So I dropped the wife and kiddos, drove down to find a place to park and came back to find this.

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That's my daughter looking through some binoculars a generous lady let her borrow as they lined up at the ranger established perimeter. Why did the ranger establish a perimeter? Because

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there was a Mama grizz hanging out with her three cubs. Sorry for the shitty photography but apparently I was so excited I mostly just got video and no pics so these are screen caps cause this site has no good video function. This was a big deal for us because one of the biggest goals of all for this trip was to see a bear in the wild. I had never seen one. More importantly my dad (not on the trip) had never seen one, so I pumped the kids up before the trip "we are hopefully going to see a bear and when we do we're gonna call grandpa and tell him "we saw a bear before you did". And sure enough this was pretty much our first chance to see one and we got not one but four and grizz rather than black bear at that. Huge moment for us, even though we were aways away and surrounded by people.

We went into Yellowstone for the night and the next day (see below) then came back down through Grand Teton towards a little place we were staying at on the west side of Teton Pass in Victor Idaho. On the trip south we stopped in the park to get something to eat and came across a mama fox and three kits. Again shitty screen caps:

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So that was fun.

Then rolling out after dinner we saw another grizz (this one a solo male). Didn't get any good pics of him though but by now we were really on a roll.

We also came back the next day to go to the Visitor Center to get the kids passports' stamped because both ways going through GT we were too late in the day to catch the VC. And on the way back from the VC we saw a baby moose nuzzling under its mom.

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Also there are mountains there.

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So yeah I guess for some of the better park experiences like this the parks will need their own poast and it won't even work to group them together.

TL; DR: Grand Teton is the tits and you should spend more time there than we did.

Grand Teton is da tits. I used only live 4 hrs south and fished the Snake a number of times in the park. The Snake River Cut is a pretty fish @chuck . Sensitive though and likes nice clean, mountain water.

Never saw a grizzly 'bar though. That's pretty special.

One of my teammates from college, used to guide trips up the Grand Teton.

 

[dnc]

Next stop: Glacier

I've sort of been to Glacier a number of tims. My grandparents lived in Eastern Montana so we traveled there pretty frequently, visiting Glacier at least one direction more often than not butt mostly when I was too young to appreciate it. Apparently we drove Going to the Sun 2 or 3 times when I was real little, plus we took the Amtrak Empire Builder a few tims which basically follows Highway 2 around the southern edge of Glacier.

Since I gave a crap I'd really only been to Glacier twice before this trip - once the Highway 2 route with just sorta popping into Lake McDonald area and once over GTTS road. It was beautiful of course.

We were too early this trip for the pass to be open GTTS so while we came up the west side into Kalispell we could only go into the west side of the park as far as Trail of the Cedars. We did the trail which was wet and green fun (felt like a trail in Washington really), then headed back out and around to the east side of the park. It was super cloudy the whole morning so mountain wise we couldn't see much of anything sadly. We drove in as far as we could to St Mary Lake on the east side which was clear and got some mountain views which was nice. Butt honestly, at this point, Glacier was kind of a bust for us. Zero wildlife, big crowds, a couple nice mountains butt nothing that compared to the Tetons.

Butt then we drove into Many Glacier where we had reservations for the night. I cannot overstate how badly you need to go to Many Glacier.

The drive in is pretty nondescript - the whole east side of Glacier you feel like you are in the boonies of the boonies. My wife questioned wtf we were going more than once. Just before you arrive at Many Glacier the peaks start to become visible and they are glorious. The river has a nice waterfall right where the road turns to the hotel.



And there's a hillside on the north that was just teeming with wildlife. Driving in we saw a good size herd of bighorn sheep. This was a nice welcome for us.

The hotel itself is glorious, swiss Alps style architecture. The rooms are nothing special but ours was on the bottom floor with a door on the backside that led directly to the lake. The mountain/lake scenery is otherworldly, I've never spent a night in such a beautiful place before. And the wildlife is crazy plentiful. While we were out admiring the lake some others with binoculars went crazy as a grizzly bear chases a black bear across the hillside. We could sort of make it out with the naked eye but with binoculars sure enough this grizz was chasing off a black bear. No idea how it started butt it was cool af to watch. We also saw a moose on the other side of the lake in the distance.

After dinner we went out to explore the area a bit more, we tried to hike around the lake but we didn't get far before a massive snowbank made it impassable. So we decided to drive what we could drive, and it wasn't long before we came to a traffic jam with a grizz sow and two cubs on the side of the road. Shortly after that we came across the moose in the pic below.

Coolest place we stayed on the trip, prettiest place we visited on the trip and probably the greatest concentration of wildlife in one fairly condensed area that we saw.

5 stars, kudo'd, nominated, 10/10 would recommend.

Number one on my list of places I want to return to with much more time to take it all in.

 

[dnc]

Bonus park: Banff

We drove north to Calgary then west to Banff which was the place I was most excited to visit on the whole trip. I've wanted to go here basically as long as I've known it existed. First stop was the Banff Gondola, cool ride and views from the top.



We stopped at a little street fair in the town of Banff which is in the NP (Canadian parks apparently work a little different) and at from a couple food trucks. It was a cool vibe, great weather, nice people watching, beautiful scenery. After dinner we drove up to Lake Louise where our hotel was. Sadly it was cloudy and a bit rainy when we arrived so our Lake Louise views weren't the best but still worth seeing.



We had planned to get up early and drive up to Moraine Lake but we called an audible and it was the right call. There's a limited number of spots available at the top and allegedly you can have to wait hours for them to let you onto the road up during the daytime but when we went in late evening we almost had it to ourselves. No crowd issues at all. When we got the top we found it mostly iced over.




One of the coolest experiences playing around at that frozen lake in the Valley of the Ten Peaks.

Overall Banff was a little bit of a disappointment, I think just because Glacier had been so spectacular, and Banff was our first major strikeout on wildlife. But the gondola was a very cool experience and Moraine Lake was worth every pemmy. If I ever go back I want to be sure it's not coming right after Many Glacier.

 

[dnc]

Here's the rough overall route btw if anyone cares

 

[YellowSnow]

Bonus park: Banff

We drove north to Calgary then west to Banff which was the place I was most excited to visit on the whole trip. I've wanted to go here basically as long as I've known it existed. First stop was the Banff Gondola, cool ride and views from the top.

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We stopped at a little street fair in the town of Banff which is in the NP (Canadian parks apparently work a little different) and at from a couple food trucks. It was a cool vibe, great weather, nice people watching, beautiful scenery. After dinner we drove up to Lake Louise where our hotel was. Sadly it was cloudy and a bit rainy when we arrived so our Lake Louise views weren't the best but still worth seeing.

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We had planned to get up early and drive up to Moraine Lake but we called an audible and it was the right call. There's a limited number of spots available at the top and allegedly you can have to wait hours for them to let you onto the road up during the daytime but when we went in late evening we almost had it to ourselves. No crowd issues at all. When we got the top we found it mostly iced over.

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One of the coolest experiences playing around at that frozen lake in the Valley of the Ten Peaks.

Overall Banff was a little bit of a disappointment, I think just because Glacier had been so spectacular, and Banff was our first major strikeout on wildlife. But the gondola was a very cool experience and Moraine Lake was worth every pemmy. If I ever go back I want to be sure it's not coming right after Many Glacier.

I've fished the Bow river in Banff downstream a few miles from the falls.

 

[YellowSnow]

Here's the rough overall route btw if anyone cares

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You missed the lead. Sad.

 

[dnc]

Here's the rough overall route btw if anyone cares

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You missed the lead. Sad.

Talm bout Crater Lake I presume?

 

[RaceBannon]

Here's the rough overall route btw if anyone cares

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Between this and travels with Mabel I am envious as fuck

 

[YellowSnow]

Here's the rough overall route btw if anyone cares

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Between this and travels with Mabel I am envious as fuck

And I've seen Travels With Mabel @LebamDawg , live and uncut in person. And I've smoked weed and talking shit with Race in person.

But @dnc just skipped on by and didn't stop to say hi to Yella.

 

[CFetters_Nacho_Lover]

Here's the rough overall route btw if anyone cares

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What I’m getting from all this is that @dnc lives in Graceland

 

[dnc]

Here's the rough overall route btw if anyone cares

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What I’m getting from all this is that @dnc lives in Graceland

shhhhhhh

 

[LebamDawg]

I think he lives in Joplin and meets his squeeze at Graceland

I'm going to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis, Tennessee

 

[YellowSnow]

Here's the rough overall route btw if anyone cares

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What I’m getting from all this is that @dnc lives in Graceland

Nah. He’s neighbors with that cousin fucker @SECDAWG

 

[dflea]

It's not a National Park - but it is a National Forest. I hadn't been to Mt. Baker in years, but we made a trip up there last summer, and grabbed a few good photos.

 

[dnc]

It's not a National Park - but it is a National Forest. I hadn't been to Mt. Baker in years, but we made a trip up there last summer, and grabbed a few good photos.

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There's no good reason that North Cascades hasn't annexed Baker yet. It's literally right on the edge of the park.

Absolutely gorgeous place.

 

[whlinder]

Also jealous as fuck.

When I was 10 I went to Calgary and Banff. Mt Assiniboine was amazing (took an helicopter in to the camp) and we went out on the Athabasca glacier. I can only imagine what it looks like now.

 

[CFetters_Nacho_Lover]

Also jealous as fuck.

When I was 10 I went to Calgary and Banff. Mt Assiniboine was amazing (took an helicopter in to the camp) and we went out on the Athabasca glacier. I can only imagine what it looks like now.

I had never heard of Banff until maybe 10 years ago when my then 80ish year old FIL mentioned it and I thought he meant BAMF.

 

[1to392831weretaken]

You missed the lead. Sad.

He didn't miss the lede. What are you talking about? It was right there in the first paragraph:

So for context we spent 41 days on the road and I think ended up seeing bits and pieces of 21 American National Parks plus one primary Canadian park (Banff) plus sort of passing through about 3 other Canadian parks. Big quantity over quality trip, we wanted to see as much as possible. It was the wife, myself and three kids, then aged 7, 6 and 2. We put almost 12,000 miles on the minivan[/b] round trip. Left Memphis day before Memorial Day, spent about 12 days getting to Seattle (up through TN, AR, MO, KS, started site seeing in Colorado, NW Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Alberta and BC), 8 days in Seattle, a couple nights on the Oly peninsula, and another 20 days getting home (through Oregon, California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, then basically done siteseeing and just hustling back through NE NM, TX panhandle, OK, AR, and TN to home).

 

[dnc]

WASHINGTON PARKS (DAMMIT!)

After leaving Banff we drove west into BC technically through Yoho, Glacier and Mt Revelstoke NPs, but since we never left the Transcanada Highway there's not really much to report there. We dropped south through Kelowna into Washington until we hit Highway 20 and headed west. I've only been through North Cascades Hwy once as a kid (eastbound) and loved it. This was my first time taking it westbound.

As with most of our mountainous experiences the first half of this trip the east side had much better visibility than the west. Washington Pass was gorgeous as expected. It would actually end up being the best mountain views we would have in our ten days in Washington.





Ross Lake is always bittersweet for me - one of the absolute prettiest places I've ever been. But also not real. Like admiring fake tits, hard to look away but you somehow feel a little cheap for it. What can I say, I'm a whore for an emerald alpine lake, even a manmade one.





The combination of having a 2 year old (and a whiny 7 year old) and the hurriedness of the trip we weren't set up to do much hiking, and sadly didn't get to do any in North Cascades.

Upon arriving in Seattle it was heavy cloud cover the entire time we were there - the only day the clouds lifted much at all was the day we went to the Space Needle so thankfully the wife and kids got to see Rainier actually exists. We did a day trip to Mt Rainier National Park but it was full blown rain most of the way and snow once we got to Paradise so zero visibility. Still a fun day, saw some sort of grouse, a mama deer and what looked like a brand new baby fawn, and the kids got to play in the snow in June which is a big deal for southern kids.















After leaving Seattle we did almost two full days on the Olympic Peninsula. Went to see my aunt and some cousins in Port Orchard then drove through @creepycougville (depressing town man!) up to the Rain Forest Village on Lake Quinalt. Just outside Olympic NP but within sight of it, this was a really cool place to stay. My wife absolutely fell in love with the greens on the peninsula, especially here.





The next day we made the loop around Oly NP. First major stop was Kalaloch, then made a pretty decent hike down to Ruby Beach because the parking lot was under construction so you had to hike from the road.







We made our way to the Hoh Rainforest which was super busy, we probably had to wait in line at the entrance gate an hour or more to get in. We went on a Sunday (Father's Day actually) so I guess Dads love the rainforest? I know I do.