Pacific Northwest Vakay Day 9

Day 9: Well friends here we are, at the end. We definitely went out with a bang on this trip. We hit three national parks and three states. Is that a record? I don't know. Are we crazy? I think so. 

We woke up in Yellowstone after a cold night of camping and drove into Grand Tetons National Park. 

I might have been looking forward to this park the most, and it did not disappoint.

The clouds were in our way at the beginning of the day. We were hoping they would clear up soon. We saw SSOOO many people on our trip and most were taking pictures with their ipads. We think it looks kind of ridiculous because they are bigger than any camera, but they may take relaly good pictures. Matt decided to join in on the fun!

Shortly after, the clouds began to clear, and what we saw was spectacular! 

The water was so clear in the morning the reflection of the mountains was unreal. 

The mountains look pretty spectacular on their own though too, don't you think?

Then we took a beautiful stroll around the lake.

The mountains were still gorgeously reflecting in the water. 

We saw some fellow Arizonans taking a kayak trip down the river. It was a gorgeous day for it!

Look at this crazy looking tree we found!

Then we took a drive through the park and were able to get this incredible view!

We drove out of the park and were able to see this. I can see why people call this their favorite national park.

We left Tetons and headed through Jackson. It is the just about the cutest town ever! Then we drove, and we drove, and we drove. We passed a few signs of other national parks, but we didn't think we would have time to stop. However, we kept seeing signs for Bryce Canyon over and over again, much more often than any of the others. Then we saw the sign for the entrance to Bryce Canyon. I remember my Grandma Mark telling me Bryce Canyon is one the coolest places she has ever been so I have always wanted to check it out. It was almost sunset, but we decided to go ahead and check it out. We are so glad we did!

We checked out a couple of view points and fell in love. We will definitely be back there soon!!

Stopping at Bryce Canyon set us back a little bit, but we were still ahead of schedule overall. We stayed the night in Utah and headed back the next day. I'm so glad we did because we had some beautiful views of Arizona on our morning drive. 

I thought I would end my segment of our road trip with the highlights of our trip:

Best breakfast: Staybridge Inn in Spokane, WA

Best lunch: Grant Village Restaurant at Yellowstone

Best dinner: Bridges in Vancouver

Best hotel: Monticello in Longview, WA

Best hike: Hike to Panorama Point at Paradise in Mount Rainier

Best view: Avalanche Creek Trail at Glacier

Best day: Day 5-Squamish, BC with sea to sky gondola

I so hope you have enjoyed reading about our road trip. It will be a great way for us to look back and remember it. Again, a huge thank you to all of our friends and family for the amazing tips and tricks that helped make this one amazing trip. Make sure you come back next week to Mad Wife Skillz for recipe week! I will feature a new recipe everyday!! Don't forget you can follow me by entering your email under the tab "Follow My Blog". You will be sent an email every time I publish a new post. Hope you all have a great weekend! :)

Pacific Northwest Vakay Day 8

Day 8: We woke up SUPER early, drove a couple hours and made it to the largest and oldest national park, Yellowstone by 8 am. We saw lots of stuff and took tons of pictures. Don't believe me? Here they are!

Right off the bat we felt like we were on another planet.

  

But soon we were back to more waterfalls. 

I felt like I was taking all of these for granted because we definitely don't get this view in Phoenix everyday.

We saw tons of bison.

They were everywhere!

There was some pretty crazy stuff here. Check out this bubbling mud pit.

Doesn't this look like there is a dragon in here? It sounded like it too!

We saw some pretty neat stuff! Check this out.

Then we got to the geysers.

We waited for a little while to watch Old Faithful erupt. There were quite a few people watching with us!

And it finally went off!

You can watch it here.

There were all sorts of crazy geothermal features throughout the park.

Then we headed over to the Grand Geyser. It was about ready to erupt for the day so we stayed to watch.

Look at this thing go

It also completely drenched us on our way out! We were soaked!!

We made one last stop, and it was totally worth it.

Is this neat or what?

Cool, right? This is what Matt wanted to see, and I can see why!

We headed down to the lake for supper. Then we headed back to our second campsite of the trip (yes you read that right) and started a fire. It was kind of fun to sit and hang out with the fire for a while. 

That night it rained a little and was much colder than our camping at Glacier, but yet I still survived. 

Only one more day friends! We hit up three national parks in one day. That has to be a record, right? Check back tomorrow as I finish out our trip. Next week is going to be recipe week over here at mad wife skillz so keep reading!