Skip to main content

Our last-minute vacation in Yellowstone National Park

As I unexpectedly got a week off in the middle of the summer (due to changing jobs), my husband and I decided to take a quick vacation to a place we had wanted to visit for a long time: Yellowstone National Park.

We started planning one week before our trip, in the middle of the summer vacation time, so we were concerned about the logistics. Fortunately, we were still able to find accommodation in the park itself, although this meant we had to change hotel every day. This turned out to be a good solution, as it allowed us to visit all parts of the park without having to backtrack to the same corner every night. Also, once we were there, we learned of the major roadworks between Grand Teton and Yellowstone. We were glad we didn't go with the solution of staying in Grand Teton for the whole time and "commuting" to Yellowstone, which we had considered at some point. (even without the roadworks, I wouldn't recommend)

Booking flights and rental car turned out not to be too difficult: we got the flights we needed at a decent price and didn't have issues with our rental car rservation (although they hadn't prepared the car seat for us when we arrived. We could have done without the additional frustration)

Based on our hotel reservations, our program was as follows (details can be found by clicking on the links below).
Day 1: SFO-Jackson,WY. Drive to Old Faithful via Grand Teton.
Day 2: Old Faithful-Canyon-Lake
Day 3: Lake-Tower Roosevelt-Lamar Valley-Mammoth Hot Springs
Day 4: Mammoth Hot Springs-Norris-Old Faithful.
Day 5: Old Faithful to Jackson, WY. Fly home.

Overall, we had a great time. It was very relaxing to be either outdoors hiking, driving in beautiful sceneries, or having dinner in old restaurants with nice views. And we didn't have cell phone reception for most of the time, so no risk of being bothered with email:-)

It was a good experience for Daniel too, as he learned a lot of new words (he is an expert in "steam" and "bison" now), saw big animals and played in rivers. He did well despite spending so much time in the car or in a carrying backpack. He is at an age where we can be entertained with stories or crayons (at restaurants). This made it easier than it would have been a few months ago, I think. However, he missed his friends from daycare, as he kept asking for them all the time. Good it was only a few days and he is now back into his happy routine.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Merry Christmas & Yule log ("Buche") review

Merry Christmas Everyone! Wishing you wonderful Christmas celebrations. Since we were not able to travel this year, due to covid, we couldn't enjoy the typical French Christmas dinner, and we miss the typical dessert, the delicious "buche". So we brought the buche to us. Thankfully we have a few bakeries around town who now offer it as part of their standard holiday offering. Here is our review. We tried: Draegers, La Baguette, Woodside Bakery and Mademoiselle Colette. Enjoy! And please let us know in the comments if you have tried any other yule logs.

Turkey travel with toddler - a good idea after all

After 10 days traveling in Turkey with our 16-month old son, we found that going to far-away countries with a toddler is not as difficult as many people believe. Yes, we also had our own concerns, and we had set our expectations that we might have a rough time. Yet, we had decided that it would be worth the effort since we were very eager to visit Turkey. As it turns out, most of our concerns weren’t justified, and we found that Daniel had a great time in Turkey. Below are a few things we have learned in our trip. • Jetlag : Interestingly enough, it was easier for Daniel to adjust after this complex trip than after a “simple” journey to Germany. After a 26-hour journey (2 flights and one 2.5 hour car drive) and a jump of 10 time zones, internal rhythm is typically quite upset for everyone, big and small. We flew with the night flight from San Francisco to Frankfurt, so Daniel had a good night of sleep behind him when we landed in Germany. From then, we paced his naps until the follo...

Alisal Ranch review and round up of California ranches

We just came back from our latest visit of a California ranch. As I mentioned earlier, we have been visiting several dude ranches in California over the last few months and we have enjoyed them all. With the weather getting colder, many ranches have closed for the winter, but The Alisal in South California remains open all year. This is where we decided to spend Thanksgiving and we were not disappointed. It was the perfect time to visit the Alisal and we had a wonderful time. To be honest, I was a little skeptical first. The ranch is very expensive and I was not impressed by the initial contact I had had with them. I was told we had to book rides in advance because space was limited; and the back and forth was quite painful. I thought it was disappointing for such a high-end resort. But I learned later on that they were short-staffed because of Covid, and that horseback riding was not necessarily the primary activity for the resort so they were juggling a lot of priorities. But once ...