home of the ugly face
Posts tagged road trip
Road Trip 2009
Jan 6th
I (finally) put together some of the clips I shot on my road trip with the lads last August. Enjoy.
Yellowstone
Aug 14th
We’ve spent the past couple of days in Yellowstone National Park. I have never seen such unique and strange beauty in the world. We’re staying The Traveler’s Lodge in West Yellowstone. We have seen Old Faithful, Yellowstone Lake, The Old Faithful Inn, mud volcano, crazy steam vents, buffalo, elk, some cascades, people from other countries, the Yellowstone Waterfalls. You name it, we saw it, and it was all very beautiful and impressive.
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Tomorrow we will travel through Yellowstone to the Grand Teton National Park. We’ll take our time there before heading to Lost Valley Ranch in Colorado.
Glacier National Park
Aug 11th
Hey there again, we’re back in civilization,after spending the past two days in Glacier National Park. It is an absolutely gorgeous and huge place! We arrived yesterday afternoon and lucked into a camping spot in the Apgar Campground. The lake there is full of beautiful clear water, and the pebbled beaches made for a fun time. I took a dip in it and it was chilly but refreshing.
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This morning we woke up and took a 12 mile round trip hike way up to a lodge in near one of the glaciers in the park. It was a steep and tiring but totally worth it hike. Once we got back down, Andrew and I jumped in the lake again and we headed on out towards Missoula. There we will spend the night, and head into Yellowstone tomorrow…
Rushmore, Devil’s Tower, and Nowhere
Aug 10th
So we got a little sidetracked yesterday. We gave Mount Rushmore a drive-by, we didn’t really want to pay $10 to get a closer look, it was impressive though. We took a short hike somewhere on the backside of that mountain. Nice to be outside the car for a bit.
We decided not to pass up the opportunity to see Devil’s Tower once we entered Wyoming. It stands 28 miles north of I-90, but it was totally worth it! It’s the massive stump of volcanic rock left over after the mountain had eroded away. Evidently there’s a grassy knoll on top that’s the size of a football field. We hiked and jumped around on the boulders down below. It was beautiful. There’s a field full of prairie dogs nearby that was also quite fascinating.
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So when we left Devil’s Tower, we thought it would be smart, since we were eventually headed north anyways, to try and keep the 28 miles we had already come. Long story short, we turned up into an area near the Thunder Basin national grassland. A couple hours of traveling on a gravel road and seeing all of maybe 3 other cars, and we noticed we had about 70 miles until empty. The towns listed on our map were unbelievably small, and didn’t have gas stations. We were concerned enough to pull over and ask some locals if we should continue north or what would be best. We were advised that it would be best to backtrack some and head west. In the end, we had about 3 miles until empty when we arrived in Gillette, yes still in Wyoming(actually, even further south)! It was an awesome detour. We cannot believe so few people live on and work so much land! The open range was beautiful. The detour was well worth it.
We grabbed some grub and I drove for a few hours through Billings, Montana. We parked and camped in the van shortly thereafter. Hopefully we’ll see Glacier National Park later today…
On Our Way
Aug 9th
Andrew, Cisco and I have departed a two week journey to the north and west. We will be on the road for two weeks. On our list of things to see are:
- The Arch in Saint Louis
- The Badlands
- Mount Rushmore
- Glacier National Park
- Yellowstone National Park
- Lost Valley Ranch (Colorado)
- Sand Dunes National Park
We already witnessed the famous Saint Louis Arch last night (Saturday, 4ish am). It was quite huge. Very cool. We only stayed for a few quick minutes (a cool cop let us park illegally close to the arch). I had the second shift of driving, which went from about half-midnight until around 4am. I slept after we stopped at the arch. It seems like a dream even now because I was so tired when we stopped.
We’ve continued up through Iowa, and will soon be headed west through South Dakota.
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Sunday, August 9
We made it through part of South Dakota Saturday. We arrived at Badlands National Park just in time for sunset. I’ve never seen anything like that place. Very beautiful. Afterwards, we drove into a little town called Wall. Wall is home to the allegedly famous Wall Drug(there were a ton(>60) of signs for it along the roads we’ve travelled so far, reminiscent of Rock City signs all over the southeast). We decided we’d stay at a hotel for the night to give our bodies a full recharge. I’m writing this from our breakfast table at Wall Drug. This place reminds me of Cracker Barrel.
From here we plan to head further west. Making a brief stop at Mount Rushmore before we drive on to Glacier National Park. It will be after dark when we arrive and we haven’t yet arranged a place for us to stay…
