Montana and Back Again

My friends, the Bryner-Feltis Family, invited me up to Montana for the weekend to hit Yellowstone and the Tetons. I accepted.

We met up at Grandparent's house in Bozeman, Montana. It was a great little area that I'm sure would be considerably less great in the Winter. After a late breakfast I sat on the porch and contemplated retirement while we waited for the rest of our party to arrive from Billings.

When they arrived we headed into Yellowstone and found a great little section of a river where everyone was swimming. Many people were fighting the rapids upstream in order to float down the quick waters. It was reasonably deep which made this possible but incredibly frightening to do with two small children. We did it anyway--the kids did fine in their life jackets but Jon and I almost drowned as we swam with him. It was a blast.

We hit some hot pots after  as well as Old Faithful (which was as impressive as I hoped) and we had dinner at the cafeteria overlooking the geyser. We then headed into Jackson Hole for supper and ice cream before driving to Teton Village to check into our Hostel.

This was the coolest place to sleep.

There was a great common area for everyone to hang out in since the rooms were so sparse and there was even pets wandering around. It was refreshing to stay in a place with such personality. There were even signatures on the wall in the common room dating back to the 60s.

The next day we headed into Grand Teton National Park and instantly saw a bear some thirty feet from the road which of course everyone got out of their cars to look. The kids really wanted to swim so we drove to Lake Jenny and waded around a peninsula while skipping rocks.

We wanted to be back in Provo by dinner so said farewell to the great West and headed home. The little computer told us there were three possible ways to get home with minutes difference in travel time so we took the back roads. It was such a long drive.

Thanks Bryner-Feltis Family  for inviting me and for taking pictures. Most of the above pictures were taken by them.