At the end of our last blog we had left Dora (our campervan) in Montana and flew back to Portland for 9days to spend some time with Ben’s parents before they departed back to the UK and to complete some overdue life admin.
For those that aren’t aware, since we started our travels a few months ago, Intel is going through some more internal restructuring/cost savings and recently asked for volunteers for early retirement and redundancy. Not being eligible for retirement (unless we win the lottery anytime soon), Ben put his name in for voluntary redundancy and it was accepted. His last official day after 13+ years was September 30th. The jury is still out if our original plan to travel through Jan remains or it gets extended before we need to rejoin the workforce.
Once back in Billings Montana, we headed south and crossed into Wyoming to visit its two National Parks, Yellowstone and Grand Teton. We had previously visited both parks in 2018 and were excited to go back explore parts we didn’t make it to last time.
Across a week we spotted tons of wildlife, hiked, camped and made the most of the fantastic autumn/fall weather. We had clear skies (if you discount the smoke from nearby wild fires) everyday which led to super cold mornings where we were wrapped in puffers and hats. We got up to see sunrise one morning in the Tetons and it was 26F/-3C but by 3pm it was 75F/23C! Ben continues to almost exclusively wear his shorts. We’ll see how long this lasts…
We saw Bison, Moose, Elk, White Tailed Deer, Pronghorns, a Red Fox and of course lots of chipmunks - no Alvin though. The one animal we didn’t encounter were Grizzlies. This did not worry Mel one bit, especially as we have seen many bears over the last couple of months.
On the few nights where we didn’t camp we treated ourselves to staying in some of the National Park lodges that were spread around the parks. These allowed us to have a proper shower, and wash our clothes. The only downside of the lodges was the canteen style dinners. Although there is normally a variety of dinning options, all but the school dinner inspired options were closed for the season. These so called ‘dinners’ made our camp cooking seem gourmet!
We did a ton of hiking throughout the trip, but our three favourites we’d recommend were:
Amphitheater and Surprise Lakes (Grand Teton) - 4.8 miles up, 2986ft elevation gain. Hard hike but very few people around so we had the lakes to ourselves at the top! Hiking along the meadows and into the Tetons was beautiful!
Avalanche Peak (Yellowstone) - 2.3 miles up, 2070ft elevation gain. We had forgotten about hiking at elevation so this was not only steep but topped out at 10,543ft so our lungs gave us a hard time on this one heading up. Insanely amazing 360 degree views at the top and thankful for the wind break stone walls up there!
Mount Washburn (Yellowstone) - 3.4 miles up, 1404 ft elevation gain. We really enjoyed this one - gentle incline the whole way up with panoramic views a lot of the way up and down! Only downside was the wind at the top… 30-40mph gusts, safe to say we did not stop for long!
We met a few characters on our hikes. The two that stand out were a extroverted Brit who worked in the theatre industry who turns out was more scared of bears than Mel, and Swiss guy who had great English but there were a few moments where things got lost in translation…sharing women with his brother and a BDSM escort somehow made its way into the conversation as we went down the mountain.
We ended the trip by exiting Yellowstone along the Beartooth Pass Highway which is one of the all American scenic byways that we only just managed to drive as it closes for winter very shortly. The mountain view’s were epic, although the number of hairpin bends reminded us of the Road to Hana.
What’s Next:
Having been back on the road nine days, we have yet to see any rain. Fingers crossed this holds as we head into the Dakotas.
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