HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY FROM THE BEAUTIFUL STATE OF WYOMING!
No more sleeping in for us. This morning we woke up bright and early at 4:45 after a long and tiring night of stormy weather!!! We got to use our brand new, super fancy, 10 person pop-up tents! We covered all of our bags with traps under a shelter, but most of us still woke up with yucky wet bags! Let’s just say it was slightly chaotic and many learned how to effectively tarp and setup/take down the tents for the future, but HOPEFULLY we won't be needing them ever again!
We were on the road by 6:30am after what felt like an eternity of a morning! Once we got on the bus, everyone was acting like a sleepy!!! For breakfast, we had gourmet donuts and cinnamon apple sauce! Delish! We arrived at our first destination Jackson Hole at 9:30am. We got to see the awesome antler archways, did a little shopping while some of us even stopped to watch the 4th of July parade! Some people got cool pics with the stuffed town bison too! For lunch, most of us ate in the town... bison burgers were a huge hit!
We then hopped back on the bus around 12:00pm and headed to the Teton Mountains! As we got in the bus, the cooks or "cookies" as V would say served peanut butter and jelly to those who didn't eat in town! The drive to the mountains was almost as pretty as the actual Tetons!! We had a little song along, took lots of pics, and then got back on the bus to head to Yellowstone! It wasn’t too long of a drive and we enjoyed the beautiful views of the mountains along the way.
We arrived at Yellowstone around 5pm and had about a half hour to do a bit of shopping and get some yummy ice cream while waiting to go see Old Faithful! (we would rate the Yellowstone icecream a 8/10 so pretty good!) Old Faithful was scheduled to go off around 5:47pm give or take 15 minutes. So we all walked over and anxiously waited.When Old Faithful finally erupted you could hear oooos and ahhhhs all throughout the crowd! After watching the awesome geyser, we headed over the Old Faithful Inn to view the beautiful inside and take a quick pic. It wasn't long before we loaded up again and headed to see the thermal pools! When we arrived, we found out that we were going to have a tour guide with us! Our tour guide was none other than the amazing Johan Sprite, who studied geyserology. He was very inspiring and he actually looked surprisingly familiar!! Sadly, we could not jump into the pools as we wished we could, but we did get to smell some amazingly horrible scents from the steam.
Leaving the thermal pools, we headed to our last destination, the Little Grand Canyon, before making camp tonight. I bet you would never guess we got to see it twice (just kidding it wasn’t as cool as the Grand Canyon but it was still beautiful in its own way with a added waterfall). Many people got cute photos of the Canyon and some with friends. After a quick stop at the rest area in the park, we trucked on toward Cody, Wyoming! On the drive, we got to see an absolutely beautiful sunset that just couldn't get any better.... until we say lots and lots of bison!! The ones off by themselves got named too...one being Brad and one being Chad!! We also played elk I-spy.
Ponderosa will be our home away from home tonight and we can't wait to wake up in the morning to go whitewater rafting!!
XOXO sneezes are out!!
