That's right, friendos! I went on vacation, and now you get to hear all about it under my cleverly coined "Smith-Capades" header! Visiting Yellowstone, America's oldest National Park, during the National Parks Centennial is basically the best planning ever. By which, I should clarify, none of it was my planning and I was simply along for the ride.
2016 was a big year of travel for us (California, Arizona, Nevada, Colorado all on one glorious, intimate road trip in January) but Montana was the only place that felt like home, but better. California as a whole didn't do it for me, the Southwest was foreign in a delicious, temporary way, but Montana seemed like somewhere I could actually move to.
The air was crisp and smooth, and there were somehow no bugs in August, which is my most hated part of warm weather. We stayed in this gorgeous three story ski lodge maybe a half mile from Lone Peak Mountain, with a fire, a deck hot tub and a pool table. So? What did we do?
We spent a day in Yellowstone...
Driving through the Hayden valley, we saw bison and deer. At one point we become intimately acquainted with dozens of bison blocking traffic.
Stayed on the boardwalk and walked the borders of the The Grand Prismatic Spring, where it looks like sheets of liquid copper melt into a steaming kaleidoscope. The best part of this area was how weirdly windy it was, and how the base of every boardwalk was full of hats of all types that had blown off people's heads.
We sat around waiting for Old Faithful to blow as the rain held off, with our ice creams from the shop and every other tourist around that day.
Ate a bison sloppy joe for lunch in the lodge overlooking Yellowstone Lake.
Did a short 5ish mile hike around the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and watched the Yellowstone River cut through the landscape from very, very high up.
Made the insane decision to climb down hundreds of metal steps to the base of the falls.
We stayed at Lone Peak, where we road the chair lifts up for an incredible view, played with my sister-in-law's drone, and pretended that we were the skiing type.
We also did a family zip lining course that lasted a few hours and was shared with someone's terribly unhappy grandma.
We snuck in a little day to ourselves, where we walked back over to Lone Peak and road the chairlifts again, this time up to the lodge where we got ourselves a fancy lunch.
Despite all the amazing sights we saw, one of my favorite memories might be of sitting in the hot tub on a cloudless afternoon, drinking a beer and reading a magazine and feeling utterly relaxed. Naturally, I looked up hot tub prices. Only like $8,000? I'm so, so getting one when we buy our first house.
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