These two national parks have been on my wishlist for quite some time. We decided to do a road trip after finishing my first semester of school. We spent 3 days in Grand Teton National Park and 1 day in Yellowstone. Our first day there we visited Mormon Row which has a lot of old historic barns. We had driven through the night so we got there right at sunrise time which was so pretty. Grand Teton has a really majestic feel, and the mountains are a bit more jagged and rugged looking than in Colorado. We also explored Jenny Lake and did some hiking on the north side of it.

On our second day we visited Jackson Lake which is the largest lake at Grand Teton. We walked around Colter Bay and ate at the Ranch house restaurant there which had excellent food! Then we visited the Mentor Historic site which has some more old rustic looking buildings which were really pretty.

We spent day 3 in Yellowstone. We headed down towards the south end of the park to see some of the geysers, prismatic pools and Old Faithful. We could have spent several more days in Yellowstone as we only made it about 1/3 of the way around the park. Yellowstone doesn’t look impressive just driving around in the car (with the exception of seeing wildlife!) but it has some amazing features to see if you get out and walk around.

Our last day we went back to Grand Teton and hiked Paintbrush Canyon where we saw a moose! We also stopped at Oxbow Bend which has a great view of the water and mountains. Overall, the wildlife was saw was probably the coolest part. We saw bears, moose, bison, foxes, elk, deer and coyote. See some pictures below…

Grand Teton National Park:

 

Yellowstone National Park: