Family Vacation 2017

Summer Vacation 2017, “Out West!”

(created July 2, 2017; updated Sun. Aug. 13, 2017)

We had been thinking for a few years how fun it could be to visit Yellowstone and other places "out west."

In 2016 we started finalizing plans for a 2017 summer vacation, and we took the trip in June, 2017. It was awesome!

The purpose of this site is to share just some of the fun, and photos & videos of the many beautiful places, that we saw.

We saw so much that we captured more than 6,100 photos in total. That number is almost overwhelming for us. To share with others, on this site, we have grouped the photos into two groups:

1.60+ photos on “Highlights” and “Highlights 2” - for “a quick overview” We tried to just list the things we did and keep the photos to a couple from each day, which was a challenge.

2.countless other photos, grouped into pages dedicated to amazing drives, cities, National Parks, etc.

Links are at in the top header bar and at the far bottom of this page: type Ctl-End on a PC or Command-down arrow on a Mac.

Over two weeks, the second half of June, 2017, we:

⁃Flew to Denver (DEN) and drove up to spend the night in Cheyenne, WY
⁃Drove across Wyoming and South Dakota, seeing:

⁃beautiful countryside
⁃Crazy Horse Memorial
⁃Mount Rushmore National Memorial
⁃and arriving at Mateo Tepee / Devil's Tower National Monument
⁃“Colonel Dodge is generally credited with giving the formation its present name. In his book, entitled The Black Hills, published in 1876, he called it "Devils Tower," explaining "The Indians call this shaft The Bad God’s Tower, a name adopted with proper modification, by our surveyors." Newton, whose published work on the survey appeared in 1880, explained that the name Bear Lodge (Mateo Teepee) "appears on the earliest map of the region, and though more recently it is said to be known among the Indians as "the bad god's tower," or in better English, "the devil’s tower," the former name, well applied, is still retained." However, since that time, the name Devils Tower has been generally used. Geologists, on the other hand, have in some instances continued to use the original name.”

source:
https://www.nps.gov/deto/learn/historyculture/upload/First%2050%20Years.pdf

⁃Had much relaxing fun at Mateo Tepee / Devil's Tower, where we also climbed 115 feet up the north face, using ropes, which were a great help... and MANY thanks to Gabe & Julius, our climbing instructors at Devil's Tower Lodge (DTL)!!!
⁃Drove across Wyoming to stay in Cody, and to visit Yellowstone National Park
⁃Drove through Grand Teton National Park, to arrive in Jackson, WY

⁃Floated the Snake River, and had an awesome chuck wagon dinner at the Bar T 5 Ranch in Jackson, WY
⁃Mostly relaxed by the pool in Park City, Utah
⁃Celebrated Mass and saw the awesome Arches National Park in the 105-degree heat of Moab, UT
⁃Had much fun with some good friends in Vail, CO - relaxing by the pool and enjoying some short hikes atop the mountains, 8,000 - 10,800 feet up!

This map is from Bing Maps - https://binged.it/2ugcCHC,
and shows the roads we drove... all 2,298 miles of them.

This map is from Apple’s Photos (iMac app), in the “Places” mode.

This is a pretty neat way to see some of the images... it’s interesting to see that Photos just happened to select almost all photos of the beautiful American country side in each of the five states we visited.

By the numbers...

Just some of the interesting things we saw and did on our trip...

⁃1 - river we floated, in Jackson, WY - the Snake River, aka the Mad River for its "impetuous velocity"
⁃24,000 - cfps / cubic feet per second - the flow of the flooded Snake River, as we floated it in the yellow rubber raft, down from a record high of 30,000 cfps a few weeks prior
⁃We rafted with another family of four and our guide, who is from St. Louis!
⁃We floated with the Mad River Boat Company
⁃1 - moose we saw, in the Cloud Peak Mountains, just west of Buffalo, WY, on our drive from Devil's Tower to Cody
⁃1 - black bear we saw in Yellowstone, not too far from the road (and we stayed in the van)
⁃2 - grizzly bears we saw in Yellowstone, atop a hill that was across the valley from the road, a safe distance from the many people watching them
⁃2 - of the three Rivers that converge north of Yellowstone, at Three Forks, MT, to form the Missouri River - the number we saw flowing through Yellowstone - the Madison and the Gallatin (the Jefferson River is the third, and is outside of Yellowstone; and, the Yellowstone River also flows into the Missouri, in North Dakota, just past the Wyoming border)
⁃2 - hours we sat not moving in Yellowstone... one for construction between Mammoth Hot Springs and Norris, and one for unknown reason entering at West Yellowstone... and it was all OK, as we could just look around and enjoy the beauty that was all around us
⁃2 - times we saw a "Moonset o'er Moab," both of which Abby photographed
⁃2 - Catholic Churches where we celebrated Sunday Mass

⁃St. Matthew, in Heulett, WY, 10 minutes from Mateo Tepee / Devil's Tower
⁃St. Pope Pius X, in Moab, UT

⁃2 - times it rained

⁃one light drizzle as Matt and Dad first ascended Mateo Tepee / Devil's Tower,
⁃and one a big storm over the Grand Tetons, which caused only light rain on us, and the the wind from which which created whitecap waves (small ones, to be sure) on Jackson Lake

⁃1 - tree that fell in Grand Teton National Park, blocking the road, which we and some other drivers were able to move off the road so we could all drive on
⁃1 - National Monument we visited, and climbed

⁃Devil's Tower National Monument (Mateo Tepee)

⁃1 - National Memorial we visited

⁃Mount Rushmore National Memorial

⁃3 - National Parks we visited

⁃Countless
⁃National Forests we drove through
⁃3 - bison who jogged (more than a walk, less than a run), down the street / road, right outside our window (length of that movie Abby captured - 9 seconds) !!!
⁃4 states slept in:

⁃WY / Wyoming

⁃Cheyenne
⁃Devil's Tower
⁃Cody

⁃MT / Montana

⁃West Yellowstone

⁃UT / Utah

⁃Park City
⁃Moab

⁃CO / Colorado

⁃Vail

⁃6 elk seen at Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone

⁃6 places where we saw countless bison

⁃6 states visited

⁃WY / Wyoming

⁃And yes, we were < 5 miles from the NE /
Nebraska border when we stopped
for lunch the first day...

⁃SD / South Dakota

⁃MT / Montana

⁃ID / Idaho

⁃Granted, we only drove 5-10 miles in Idaho,
BUT we did drive through Geneva (not quite Switzerland, but definitely nice!)
AND we almost continued on to visit Paris, but that was another 45-minutes or so out of the way and we wanted to arrive in Park City by dinner, so we plan to go there on our next visit!

⁃UT / Utah
⁃CO / Colorado

⁃5 - tunnels on I-70, all of the tunnels on I-70 that are in Colorado, that we drove through
⁃2,298 miles driven... @ 60 mph that's ~ 38 hours of drive time

⁃5 - miles on the brand new minivan when we picked it up... it was so new that we got to pull off it some of the plastic covers that they leave on during shipping to keep the surfaces shiny

⁃28 - hours saved not driving between St. Louis and Denver (factor in 5 hours each way for drive time, check-in, flight time + baggage and we still saves 18+ hours
⁃   1 GoPro HERO4 Silver
+ 3 GoPro batteries
+ 1 Anker 13,000 mAh battery pack
+ 1 GoPro USB charging cable
+ 1 SOOSUN Side Open GoPro Case (in SLUH blue)
+ 3 64 GB SanDisk microSDXC cards
+ 1 JOBY magnetic Gorillapod tripod
+1 Chrysler Pacifica Dashboard (and two times that the GoPro overheated
     from the sun beating in on the windshield)
________________________________________________
= ~ 38 hours of driving,
      captured in time-lapsed videos,
      one-image-every-half-second / two images per second
      for a total of:
      46 videos
      playing back at a speed of 30 fps / frames per second
      for just over 2.5 hours of playback video (64 Gb!)
      from which almost 800 still images were extracted
     these just the “best of”
     from our drives
⁃308 - the drop, in feet, of the Yellowstone River as it passed over the Lower Falls... amazing force as it flows past you!
⁃19 - the population of the smallest town we saw, which was in Wyoming an hour or so east of Cody (and there were more cows than 19... just the ones we saw)
⁃5,200+ - the number of photos we captured with the iPhones and iPods
⁃ 900 - the number of videos and photos captured with the GoPro HERO4
⁃6,100+ - total

⁃< 600,000 - the population of Wyoming

⁃105 - degrees hot in Arches National Park and Moab, UT (106 without any heat index, mind you)
⁃5 - episodes of the original MacGyver we watched along the way, in the hotels that had a DVD player (all from Season 3)
(http://www.macgyveronline.com/database/episodes3)
⁃Countless

⁃The fun we had
and the memories we made
⁃Invaluable
⁃The relaxing fun we had as a family, away from emails and practices and (mostly) from electronics, etc.

⁃1 - family that is happy and thankful-to-be-so-blessed

⁃Thankful for the rides, from a friend, to and from the STL airport
⁃Thankful for our neighbor watching our dog, Backes, while we were gone
⁃Thankful we met friends in Vail and had "fun up in the mountains" with them
⁃Thankful for just having fun as a family "out west!"

Week 1...

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Photo Highlights from our trip

1. ⁃

Day 1: Ballwin / St. Louis (STL) to Denver (DEN) to Cheyenne, WY

1)Fly to Denver, visit Costco to stock up on snacks
2)Drive through surprisingly heavy traffic up to Fort Collins
3)Then enjoy the beauty of Cheyenne
⁃See the current UP / Union Pacific Tracks of the first trans-continental railroad
⁃Enjoy a nice turkey dinner per Abby’s request.

Day 2: Cheyenne, WY to SD South Dakota, to see the Cray Horse Memorial and Mount Rushmore National Memorial and then on through Rapid City to Mateo Tepee / Devil’s Tower National Monument

1)See the State of Wyoming Museum
2)See the “closed for [$300M] construction” Wyoming State Capitol
3)Drive through the high plains, seeing tall grasses blowing in the wind, seeing miles and miles of buttes, usually ending in their own hoo-doos, and seeing some oil drilling and many cows along the way
4)the Crazy Horse Memorial
5)Mount Rushmore National Memorial
6)Arriving at Devil’s Tower

Yes, that’s a bison in front of Devil’s Tower... two long-horn cattle were just to the left.

Day 3: Devil’s Tower, climbing it

When we searched for places to stay near Devil’s Tower, we learned

1)you can sleep at the base, immediately outside the National Park entrance, at the KOA campground
⁃While camping appeals to us, we weren’t going to bring our tent and gear for 2 nights
2)you can sleep 30-45 minutes away
3)you can sleep at the Devil’s Tower Lodge (DTL), and can see the Tower from your windows and patio, AND you can also climb Devil’s Tower, with ropes, under their careful, watchful, coaching

So we picked Devil’s Tower Lodge and had more fun and climbing success than we ever imagined.

THANK YOU, Frank, for being the proprietor of such a great Lodge!

THANK YOU, Gabe and Julius, for teaching us how to rock climb, properly!!

Day 4: Driving Devil’s Tower to Cody, WY

1)Celebrate Mass at St. Matthew’s Catholic Church in nearby Heulett, WY, 10 min away
2)Breakfast at Devil’s Tower Lodge (DTL)
3)Visiting with the many prairie dogs that live in the field between the parking lot for Devil’s Tower and the park entrance
4)A drive through some amazingly beautiful mountains - the Cloud Sky Peaks, and through much farmland to Cody, WY

Day 5: Yellowstone National Park, sleeping in West Yellowstone, MT
(from ~ three o’clock, counterclockwise to nine o’clock)

1)Bison / Tatanka - family photo within the first hour entering the park
2)Grizzly bears - two, atop the hill over that valley, far enough away
3)Seeing the kids’ art teacher and her husband at the one gas station - they are taking a similar trip, via Harley... proof it’s a “small world”
4)the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River
⁃From two points further away
⁃From right at the brink of the falls, looking as they fall their 308 feet into the “Grand Canyon of Yellowstone”
5)Mammoth Hot Springs
6)Elk sitting on the grass a quarter mile from the Hot Springs
7)Seeing the Gallatin and Madison Rivers, which join north of Yellowstone, in Montana, and along with the Jefferson, meet at Three Forks, Montana, to form the Missouri River

Day 6: Yellowstone, through Grand Teton National Park, to Jackson, WY

(from nine o’clock, counterclockwise, to six o’clock)

1)A slow slow entry into the park
2)Seeing the Grans Prismatic Spring, Excelsior Geyser, Opal Spring, and Turquoise Spring at the Mid-Geyser Basin
3)Seeing three geysers erupt:
⁃Grand Geyser first, a ways away, but tall enough to see over the treetops
⁃Old Faithful (erupts for 3-4 minutes every 90 minutes +/- 20 minutes)
⁃Lion Geyser (at the same time as Old Faithful, but for a shorter eruption)
4)Seeing a storm blow over Grand Teton National Park
5)Stopping the van, and with another car’s driver, moving a tree that was just felled by the blowing wind, clearing the road for traffic
6)Arriving in Jackson, WY and enjoying

Old Faithful

Left: Lion; Right-center: Old Faithful

Day 7: Jackson, WY

1)Floating the non-white water “scenic float” with Mad River Boat Trips
⁃Abby and Dad both jumped in, “all the way under water,” and floated along, holding the raft’s rope, for a bit - the 40-degree water was definitely chilly, but enjoyable, even though it was not a hot day; we weren’t cold until we got on the bus for the ride back into town
2)Relaxing a bit more by the pool
3)Dinner via horse-drawn chuck wagon at the Bar T 5 Ranch - great food and awesome music after dinner
⁃ we met a great Venturing Crew from just down the road in Idaho, visiting as part of their summer camp; the Crew’s one lead Scout’s family provides hay for the Bar T 5 Ranch, and she coordinated their visit.

Note: we captured all other photos using ProCamera, by Cocologics.

See also http://vanvooren.us/Photography for more photography links

Links to the rest of this travel journal: