Enchanting Jenn: Yellowstone!!

I'll admit, I've been horrible lately at keeping up on my personal blog. I'm sorry about that. I took a much needed rest from the photography biz this past weekend and went with Ramin, his brother Babak, and Chris up to Yellowstone for 3 fun filled days!

I don't have all of the pictures yet as the majority of them are on Ramin's camera and we haven't yet loaded them on to the computer. So here are the pictures from my camera. Here's how our trip went:

Friday - we left in the morning around 9 am. We took a pit stop right at the top of Bear Lake, there's a convenient rest stop there. As Ramin and I were waiting at the stop we looked at all of those touristy pamphlets they have. I happened to see one called "Explore Minnetonka Cave" - I thought it looked interesting and we asked the attendant how far it was. It was only 20 miles off our main path. We decided to go for it! We got there and realized it was more popular than we realized and we had an hour to kill before our tour began. There happened to be a trail down the mountain near the cave so we hiked it...that was our first hike of the trip :P The cave was AWESOME and HUGE! I definitely recommend going there if you have the chance. We drove the rest of the way to Yellowstone after the cave trip and set up camp. We arrived around 8:30 pm, just enough light left outside to see things :) We stayed at Flag Ranch right outside of the entrance to Yellowstone.

Saturday - we did the infamous Yellowstone Loop this day. We saw all of the mud pots, paint pots, geysers, lakes, rivers and waterfalls!! We took MANY hikes this day to get the best view o the waterfalls. Artist Point was awesome!!! I have a few pics here of Yellowstone's Grand Canyon - I almost like it better than the REAL Grand Canyon!! Seriously!! Overall, this day was great but exhausting! We saved Old Faithful for the very end. I have a video of it going off - I might post that later!

Sunday - ok, this was BY far the hardest day for me of the trip. I was already tired from the hiking the previous 2 days, but Ramin had signed us all up for a half day mountain bike tour and a half day of rafting down the Snake River. We started the bike ride with a personal guide named Dan around 10 am. We rode 14 miles!?!?!?! Let me tell you, it was the hardest thing I've done in my life probably. I cried at some parts because I was so scared going down hill and then I loved other parts because we were in such a pretty part of the forrest. I'm proud of myself for actually going all the way and not giving up, even though I wanted to many times :P After the bike ride we had a little time to grab some lunch in Jackson Hole - we ate at a pizza dive called Moutain High Pizza Pie - it was good but I couldn't eat much after biking so much. An hour later we were on our way to the meeting place for the river rafting trip. We'd all been rafting before, Ramin Chris and I have gone down the Colorado River in Moab before and had tons of fun. But this trip takes the cake!! The water was bloody cold but there were some awesome rapids!!! Rafting is hard work too with the paddling you have to do, but it's really all fun :) After the river trip we packed up the truck and drove straight home and arrived around 11 pm.

So that was our trip in nutshell - obviously a lot more happened. We saw almost all the animals there are in Yellowstone. A moose walked through our campsite. We saw a bison sitting in a parking lot chewing his cud - picture soon to come - we saw an osprey, or hawk, flying over the river carrying a fish in his talons. We saw many elk, bison and deer and Babak found a coyote running around and caught a glimpse of the infamous bear (I'm glad I didn't see it!)

More pictures hopefully to come this weekend!

This was the starting and ending point of our 14 mile mountain bike trip!