This last week, my boyfriend and I began a three week trip toward the west coast and back. We left on Wednesday early in the morning from Rapid City, South Dakota and arrived to Yellowstone later in the day.
We are both incredibly excited to be experiencing these travels together. The first couple days were not quite what we expected.
We arrived at Yellowstone at about 3:30 pm after about eight hours of driving. The drive was nice, as we went through mountains and the scenery gradually became more beautiful as we moved along.
When we arrived, we had planned to stay in one of the campgrounds in Yellowstone. To our surprise, only two were open this early in the season and they were both full. We asked the workers for suggestions and ended up backtracking a little more than 30 miles to a campground in a state park. It was still beautiful and was going to work out fine, but it was slightly more inconvenient.
That night a storm came in and neither of us slept very well because of the heavy winds. The tent was also caving in on the side of the wind, so we roped it back for more support.
We left the next morning for our journey of Yellowstone. Still viewing beautiful scenery, the drive was not too bad. Once we arrived in the heart of the park, everything got so much better.
Buffalo were abundant in the park. The water was fast-moving and the ground was steaming in places you would not expect. Yellowstone was unlike anything I had ever seen before.
As we drove along we saw the signs for the Lower Falls and wanted to check it out. The Lower Falls lead into the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, which is absolutely breathtaking and so much more overwhelming than I had expected.
I spotted a place where people were standing right next to the brink of the waterfall and was immediately interested. We walked over to another lookout for the Lower Falls and found that the trail to get to the brink was only 3/8 of a mile. No big deal.
To our surprise, the trail was a zig zag of steep rocky trails dropping 600 feet. I was lucky enough to slide a little ways down one of the zigs, ripping my pants and the skin down my leg, but the view once we got to the brink of the falls was so worth it.
The way back up was quite the climb. I was winded.
Next we went to a geyser basin which was nothing that I expected. The ground was steaming everywhere, pools of green and orange covered the ground and we were able to walk on a boardwalk right over the pools. Steam that smelled like rotten eggs jetted towards us at times, but again it was worth it.
This is just a small sampling of Yellowstone experiences, but the real adventure happened when we returned to camp.
We came back to gusty winds and a tent on the ground. No big deal, the wind blew over the tent and we will put it back up, right? No. After slight investigation we noticed that one of the tent poles had snapped. We messed with it for a bit and then noticed that the other pole was also broken. They make splints for broken tent poles, so we used lots of duct tape, tent stakes, and rope to hold the pole until we could find a more long-term solution.
We left to take showers and when we got back the wind had picked up even more. Almost like clockwork, the tent collapsed again as we pulled up back at camp. We jumped out of the car and pulled the poles back up in an attempt to keep it up, but we knew it was no use. Whenever one of us let go, the wind seemed to blow harder and the tent collapsed again.
Quickly, we agreed that there was no way we were going to be able to sleep in that tent that night. We took everything down in the gusting wind and threw everything in the car. Turns out that the poles snapped two more times, making four snaps total. It became dark just before we finished putting everything away. We still did not know what we were going to do.
We sat in the car and I could not find my keys. We looked outside thinking maybe I had dropped them but did not see anything. My boyfriend finally found them in the basket with all of our food.
I wanted to get out of the wind and out of the place that had just pushed down our tent so impolitely, so we headed toward the nearest town 15 miles away. As we pulled out, my car alerted me that I had low fuel. Usually it is not a big deal, but we were paranoid because it seemed like if something was going to go wrong it would.
Thankfully, we made it to the next town. We decided to head toward our next destination because we did not have many other options without a tent, besides a hotel.
We were both exhausted. I was in my pajamas and had been mentally prepared to go to sleep after my shower.
We ended up stopping in Columbus, Montana and sleeping in the car at a truck stop. It was not as terrible as one might expect, but definitely not the most comfortable.
When we woke up in the morning, we continued toward Idaho. On our way, we stopped to see if someone would be able to repair our tent poles or if we could find replacements. We did not have any luck. The only replacement poles we could find were not even half the size that we needed. We ended up buying a small, cheap tent that is working well so far.
We are now in Idaho at the campground where we planned on staying surrounded by tons of trees and a gorgeous lake.
We have had a few mishaps our first couple days, but this trip is still an exciting experience and we are anticipating the new places we will see. It is all part of the adventure. Life is good
