Great American Road Trip Leg 1: Grand Teton National Park

Back in July we went on quite a vacation. We hit Grand Teton, Yellowstone, and Twodot, Montana (yeah, we'd never heard of that one either.) It was our first time ever camping as a family anywhere other than our back yard.

The car was completely stuffed.

We saw signs like this everywhere and found them very hilarious. Apparently this is an issue.

Jackson, Wyoming, was a fun, kitschy town. Antlers everywhere! We ate at a very crowded McDonald's.

Our first order of business once in Grand Teton was to spot this moose across the river. It was so cool!

After finding our campsite and setting up camp at Jackson Lake (we got the second to last spot in the campground!), we headed out for our afternoon of Grand Teton adventure.

We drove to Jenny Lake and took a ferry ride across it. It was really fun, and also pretty breathtaking.

Fish at the dock.

Here comes the ferry!

When we got to the other side of Jenny Lake, we hiked up to Hidden Falls.

The kids brought along little notebooks. Leah took some time at the waterfall to draw and write about it.

The water was definitely chilly.

Looking back over Jenny Lake.

Then we hiked back around the lake to return to our car. It took a while for us to get past the whining threshold on this hike. Once we finally did, though, it was a lot of fun. The kids were astounded by our tales of "back then," as they like to call the days when Nate and I were children. We blew their mind with tales of our first computers.

A nicely camouflaged snake.

We saw all sorts of wildflowers.

The Tetons are pretty amazing! Before this trip I couldn't have picked them out of a lineup. One thing I thought was cool was that we could see a glacier up toward the top of the mountains. Before this trip, I'd thought a glacier was the same thing as an iceberg.

A lone pronghorn.

Things got pretty dicey after the hike. It was late and we took the long way back to camp to watch the sun set behind the Tetons. It was getting dark and cold and we hadn't gotten dinner ready. It had been a long and tiring day. Let's just say tempers were high. Thank heavens we'd taken the advice of a friend who said we should cook our foil dinners in advance.

The next morning we'd officially survived a day of camping, and things were much better. Nate got up early to take in the view at Jackson Lake.

The rest of us stayed toasty and warm in our sleeping bags.

We were delighted to find this guy and his lady friend hanging out about 10 feet from our tent.

We discovered the world's largest mushroom at our campsite.

We broke camp and it was off to Yellowstone!