i had high hopes of cramming all of my grand teton national park pics into one post, but that was just unrealistic. but i am going to get them into two posts. this is the first in that installment. firstly, on the way in, we drove from the north end to our campsite on the […]
hiking
yellowstone.junior rangers and artist paint pots.

on our second full day at yellowstone, we took it pretty easy. derek had to work, so it was just me and the three kiddos, so we decided to hit the junior ranger station closest to our entrance and then stroll around the artist paint pots boardwalk and take in some geothermal activity. the junior […]
yellowstone.upper loop drive and mammoth hotsprings.

our trip from salt lake city-ish to west yellowstone was a long one, at around 5 hours and 40 minutes. we usually like to stick to about 2-4 hours. add in packing up, bathroom, gas and food breaks, registering at the campground and setting up, and we had a long and not fun day. i […]
dinosaur national monument

on saturday, we rolled into our 22nd state, leaving colorado and entering utah. we camped at dinosaur national monument, which spans both states. after we settled in to our campsite (which wasn’t hard, because we didn’t have any hookups – sewer, electric, or water. which means we basically just parked), we headed over to the […]
maroon bells and hanging lake.

once we were sufficiently settled into our campsite at rifle gap state park, we got a good night’s sleep and loaded up the next morning to head to a really popular hiking trail. hanging lake is a pretty intense 1 mile hike up 1000 feet to get to a beautiful turquoise lake and waterfall that […]
roxborough state park.

when we arrived at the chatfield state park campground, bright and early on sunday morning, we discovered we couldn’t check in until 1 pm. so, we parked the camper in a parking lot and headed out to find adventure. several people had recommended roxborough state park, which was nearby, so we thought we would waste […]
garden of the gods, round two.

before we left colorado springs last week, we made another trip out to garden of the gods park. we wanted to check out a little trail that lead to the siamese twins rock formation, which forms a perfect little window to view pike’s peak through. so, after derek got off work one day, we rolled […]
hikes and arcades.

our second week in colorado springs kicked off with much nicer weather, so we wasted no time getting outside for a hike. we are staying very close to the red rocks canyon open space, which we have been informed is a pretty fun kid hike. it was relatively flat for the actual hike, but peppered […]
florissant fossil beds national monument

whenever we move to a new location, one of the first things i do is scout out national parks and monuments and such. the kids like to do the junior ranger program and i enjoy the history, geology, nature, etc of the different places. so, when we locked in colorado springs, i searched the nearby […]
garden of the gods.
our current campground is pretty much right next door to garden of the gods, which is like the number one rated park in america or something. so, yesterday, when derek was done with work, we hopped on over for a quick visit. i won’t bore you with trying to caption all of these pictures. basically, […]