Our Yellowstone Trip: Days 1-3
Exactly one year ago, while camping with another family (our friends the Buddenbergs) in Louisville NE, we all decided to push our camping to the limits - but this time in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming. None of us had ever been but it was on the bucket list. Especially Kyle’s.
Here we are a year later. On the road to the place they call “Wonderland” and “Like no place on earth.”
Day One (Gothenburg): I feel like we’ve been packing for a month. But the day finally came to add the last condiment to the camper’s fridge (or in Norah’s case, just ONE more stuffy on her bunk bed.)
We booked Yellowstone a year in advance which is recommended. Excursions you book about 6 months out. We decided to rent this 25 foot camper with bunkhouse and slide-out through Outdoorsy.com. Highly recommend Josh and Toni - they were absolutely wonderful to work with during the entire process. Camper came fully stocked and was easy to set up. Even though they lived in Oakland IA they met us in Omaha with the camper a couple days before we departed. It was the perfect size for our family.
Night One: We stopped in Gothenburg NE to shed 3 hours off our trip, and camped at Lakeview Campsite. A cozy little campground, we arrived and the Buddenberg’s (other family we’re traveling with) already had a fire burning and a bottle of local wine placed out on the picnic table that they purchased from Gothenberg’s own Old Home Depot Winery. We got settled in, caught up, kids explored a bit and played card games. Then off to bed about 11:30p.m. so we can depart by 8a.m. Saturday for Casper WY, a 6-7 hour drive.
Day Two (Casper, WY): With pancakes and canteloupe in our tummies, we packed the three girls in our Tahoe, boys in the Buddenberg’s, and took off. Today we are headed toward a KOA campsite in Casper WY. About 7 hours on the road. There’s swimming and a playground there so the kids can take a dip before they can’t in Yellowstone. The drive to Casper was uneventful. Stopped at Sierra Trading Company outlets in Cheyenne on the way.
Day Three (destination…..Yellowstone): The drive took longer than we thought hauling a camper, so depending on when you want to arrive I’d recommend leaving earlier. We arrived about 5p.m. and rushed through checkin, got our camper unhitched at our campsite (we were in Loop I-318), made up some quick sandwiches, and jetted off to our first planned tour - Twilight at the Firehole. We met our guide Justin with his old vintage yellow bus just in the nick of time at Old Faithful Inn (which by the way is a pretty awe-struck structure made of wood logs and a treehouse inside on the top floor). The Inn was about a 35 minute drive from Grant Village. It began to pour outside as we all piled into the bus. Two couples with us bailed which meant it was only the nine of us. Justin took us on a very special, more intimate tour of the local geisers and a beautiful waterfall called Cascade Falls. Eventually the rain stopped. We stayed on the board walks and the kids were very excited about the geiser activity. I had no idea there were so many. We even saw a spinal cord of an animal far out by one. When we got back to the campground I think everyone was pooped from the past two and a half days of driving, so everyone crashed immediately.
Stay tuned for Days 4-6 in the next post……Grand Canyon Yellowstone Falls, Hayden and Lamar Valley, Horseback riding, Mud Volcano, Mammoth Springs, Gardener MT, Snake River Float through the Tetons, Jackson Hole and Triangle X, and bear, bison, wolf and moose sightings.
Days 1-3 Recap:
- Travel: Gothenburg NE
- Travel: Casper WY KOA
- Travel: Grant Village Campground, Yellowstone
- Twilight at the Firehole excursion
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