We left San Francisco on May 31st, a day which was going to disappear pretty soon, and we flew to Salt Lake City, where we were supposed to meet Kass and Charlotte. Except, their plane was scheduled to arrive 3h later than ours, so a bit of waiting ensued. Anyway, they arrived in due time, so we picked up the car and headed towards the Dances. Now, I really need to say that the Dances are the most awesomest family ever: not only did they give us a roof and food, they also filled our trunk with tons and tons of camping gear. S-weet! Therefore, after a proper night’s sleep, and lots of (re)packing, we set out to…the supermarket. And REI. After which we went to Antelope Island. This is strategically placed in the Great Salt Lake, about which, after thorough investigation, we came to the same conclusion as the locals: full of nasty insects (there were big panels at the park entrance, announcing that there were bad-biting gnats on the island) and kinda smelly. So we toured around it in the car, saw a coyote and a pronghorn, as well as some bison (the non-slang term for buffalos), then head out, towards a camping site. This was the night of the in-cook-able mushrooms, and the next morning was our only dry one (we woke up to rain on all of the other ones).

Day 2 (or, actually, 3, I told you that May 31st somehow slipped away) took us to Grand Tetons National Park. On our way, we stopped to have World Famous raspberry shakes (Kass and Charlotte got to have a lot more…), but also to buy alcohol. Ehem. To make Kass buy alcohol. Ehem. To ask him nicely to do so. Anyway, we spent the night at Jenny Lake, and the next day we had breakfast there, too, in this awesome setting. Then off we went, towards Yellowstone.

That day (I reckon it was the 3rd of June by now), we got really lucky, as we managed to see a black bear soon after entering the park. There were probably also a bunch of bison, but, by the end of the trip, we were going to become pretty bored with these. Also, as we found out later, we saw quite a number of female elks. Sadly, they’re quite uninteresting, without the pretty male horns, so we firstly mistook them for regular deer. Ooops, our bad! The highlight of this first day, however, was that we were finally going to have S’mores. Yay! However, as it often happens when you want something really bad, making these was quite a challenge. First off, our fire thingy was 3/4 filled with water (did I mention the rain?), so we couldn’t quite make a fire. So, being the creative kids that we are, we decided to have a fire in the fire thingy across from our campsite. There, we fixed it! Or not… Eventually, the people who had paid for that site arrived, and announced us, in not-so-jolly a discourse, that they’d driven for 10hrs and that they wanted their territory back. By this time, ironically, the fire was actually beginning to look nice. Oh, well… We did, in the end, have our S’mores, though, so the night was pretty good.

Day 4 was dedicated to the lower loop of Yellowstone (the park is more or less 8-shaped). We arrived just in time for Old Faithful’s eruption, then had breakfast/lunch in the car (again, remember the rain?), and continued with many many other hot springs, geysers, etc. Much to the guys’ disappointment, we weren’t even allowed to step on the ground next to the thermal water thingies (they had walking boards made out of recycled milk jugs – cool, eh?), let alone swim in them. We saw a lot of pretty things, but photos were difficult to take, because of 1. the steam and 2. the rain. There would also be a 3. my laziness, but 1 and 2 are definitely more important.

Reason number 3, however, is what’s motivating me right now to leave you hanging for a little while. But I’ll be back soon enough, don’t worry. In the meantime, you can check out the pictures from this very very pretty trip over here.