Dubois, WY

Ummm, this is going to be a long one! There's a lot of story telling to be done...

After leaving Yellowstone we headed to Dubois, WY, a charming little town located a bit east of the Moran entrance to Grand Teton National Park (check out the map below for reference). During the couple days we stayed in Dubois we did the easy drive back and forth to the Park, enduring some serious construction and, more importantly, spectacular views.

We ended up in Dubois because Taras's old colleague had said that when we got to the area, if no one was renting his family's vacation cabin, we could stay there. It was the sweetest offer and we didn't hesitate taking him up on it (a whole house to ourselves after many hotel and campground stays, yesss!). The cabin was beautiful and exactly what you'd want out of a vacation house in the mountains, complete with deer meandering through the yard. Our favorite part was the directions we were given, "drive a few miles up the dirt road and you're close after you've passed the second cattle guard." I mean, awesome, right? We were well secluded and had a beautiful view. We spent evenings on the deck drinking local beer as the sun set and mornings lingering over coffee in the extremely fresh air. The first night we arrived I definitely cried some happy tears - it was hard to not get overtaken with emotion when thinking about how blessed we were, not only to be on this trip, but to have someone be so kind and let us use their house. You can find the VRBO listing for the cabin here.

We quickly fell in love with Dubois. The downtown has a few restaurants (we had an amazing dinner at Nostalgia Bistro and met the chef/owner who is awesome - he wears kilts and taught us that you pronounce the "s" in "Dubois") and a couple coffee shops, all set in a traditional western backdrop. The town's location makes it a great spot for outdoor adventuring and the owner of the local excursion shop is super nice.

Maybe the best part about Dubois is that they host a regular Friday night rodeo in the summer. I've been to many rodeos in my day (I hail from the Horse Capital of the World, after all) but it was Taras's first rodeo experience! We  manged to get him semi-cowboy looking with a borrowed hat from the cabin... all he needed were some Justin boots and tight Wrangler jeans and my high school self would have been in heaven. :) Anyway, back to the rodeo, Taras had a blast. He had himself some strawberry-rhubarb cobbler that was cooked in a giant cast iron skillet and decided his favorite rodeo events were Rope-n-Ribbon (three cowboys chase a calf on foot and must remove the rope from its neck and a ribbon from its tail) and Mutton Bustin' (and the cobber. That's an event, right?)

Whew. Thanks for sticking with me through this one!

-Amanda

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Yellowstone National Park, WY | Part 3 (plus a video!)

Click here for Part I and here for Part 2.

The next day was all about geysers. Did you know that Yellowstone possesses near 60 percent of the world's geysers? Inside the park, there are 150 of them within one square mile! You can read more here, if you'd like.

First up, Old Faithful. We grabbed breakfast at the Old Faithful Lodge and awaited the Geyser's eruption (Old Faithful is so named because it's one of the most predictable geographical features on earth and erupts approximately every 91 minutes). 

Next, we drove down the road to the Lower Geyser Basin. We hadn't done any research so we had no idea what to expect... and it was the most amazing sight! The colors were just magical - starting with the emerald green/ocean blues of the deep water pools, and moving to the goldenrod oranges of the shallow hot spring lake. These amazing colors come from a thin layer of bacteria that can survive in hot water.  It's a giant living colony of microorganisms and they are very fragile - visitors are strongly urged (by signs and overbearing mom-tourists) to stay off the rocks and on the wooden boardwalk. And lastly, there are hot waterholes that pump out so much steam that only strong wind gusts can clear it out for a second and allow you a glimpse of the water's surface. Such a volcanically spectacular place!

In summary, our thoughts on Yellowstone: the park is giant and amazing. We stayed only one night but saw so much in those (less than) 24 hours. It was easy for us leave so soon once we agreed to come back again in the future. Hopefully with kids because, seriously, kids need to see wonders of this place. I mean, it would be so easy to spend a week there hiking, fishing, exploring, and wildlife watching!

-Amanda

Be sure to watch this video, guys! Our videography is nothing to write home about, but there is so much natural beauty to see:


Did you catch the part when Taras rescues my hat?!  If you're visiting on a windy day, keep a hand on your hat... mine was definitely not the only one that had fallen! The hat incident put us in quite the predicament - do we leave it? That would be polluting, right? Or rescue it, and in the process mess with the ground we shouldn't be touching? We decided to rescue it - Taras used his belt plus my shoe laces to lasso the darn thing (it was my favorite hat, after all). Unfortunately, the hat got wet and bent out of shape in the process and it's never looked quite the same. :(

Thanks for reading! Find more of us here: all the things blog, facebook, twitter, instagram, pinterest, and on the new vine app for the iPhone (search for: amanda bouzakine).

Yellowstone National Park, WY | Part 2

As I mentioned in Part 1, we got into Yellowstone late in the day. After we drove around to see the wildlife, we set out to see as much as possible in the Tower-Roosevelt and Canyon Village areas before dark (we were sleeping on the other side of the park and knew we wouldn't be driving back to these areas).

[Here's a link to the park map. If you want to follow along, we came into the park from the northeast entrance, spotted wildlife all along the drive to the area near Tower-Roosevelt, continued to explore through the Canyon Village area, then drove all the way to the Old Faithful area to sleep.]

It was a beautiful drive through the park as the sun set, watching the sky change colors and to see the light reflecting in the mountain ranges. We managed to see: the Petrified Tree, Tower Fall, Calcite Springs, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, and the Lower and Upper Falls of the Yellowstone.

It was a whirlwind few hours! Once it was too dark to see anything else, we made our way to the other side of the park where our cabin was...

Speaking of our cabin, we were lucky to get it. We had planned to camp in Yellowstone, hoping to claim one of the sites that can't be reserved in advance. After our camping experience in the Bighorn National Forest, we knew our camping gear wouldn't keep us warm enough in the even colder temps expected during our night at Yellowstone. A frantic call to the Yellowstone reservation office later, we got THE LAST remaining cabin for the night (everything books up well in advance, as expected). We helped offset the extra lodging cost by missing dinner (somehow we forgot to eat before all the lodges closed?) - yay for granola bars!

-Amanda

Most of these photos were taken without appropriate daylight - sorry for the quality!

 

See more Yellowstone here. 

Yellowstone on Dwellable