Day Trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks

Sometimes it’s better to be lucky than good.  For this story, we must've been pure Irish!  In another last minute departure (not Aly’s decision this time), we found ourselves heading up to the Pacific Northwest to help move furniture back down to Texas.  Spending the better part of a week along the shore of Lake Washington basking in temps hovering in the low 60’s was enough to make even the stingiest of heatmeisers green with envy.  The end of September heading into October is a wonderful time of year. Fall colors begin to take over, and crisp air hints at the upcoming winter season. Sadly, there wasn’t much time to play outside since this was a work trip after all.  We did sneak off for a hike at North Cascades National Park one day, but the rest was there to move heavy furniture up three flights of stairs, load into a moving truck, and deliver to the ‘Burg.

The Big Yellow Penske

As you may have deduced from the intro, this wasn’t your typical road trip by way of our new RV or usual VW.  This adventure was going to cover roughly 2500 miles from Washington to Texas.  In a GIANT Penske moving truck!  Not an ideal mode of transportation for such a long trip, but we made the most of it, although we did need to apologize profusely to our internal organs for the abuse when we got home. To spice things up, neither of us had ever driven a vehicle of this size before. It made our RV look like Danny DeVito next to Andre The Giant.  With an overall length somewhere close to 38 ft, just getting it up the hills and onto our house’s street took some nerve.  We had to let all the neighbors know the night before we left not to park on the street so we had room to maneuver this beast out of the neighborhood!  And to make it more interesting, in true PNW style, it poured down rain until we were about 100 miles or so out of town.  That was fun.

In Route

Once on the interstate things settled down. We tried not to overdo the drive time each day, keeping the max at 8 hours or less.  That came out to roughly 5 days of driving.  Not only was our ginormous truck big and slow, it was also teeth-rattling rough. So the 5-hour stretches were plenty. We trekked on down the road, passed Coeur d'Alene, and made our first stop in Wallace, ID to grab a bite for lunch.  Wallace is an old mining town with a rustic downtown, dubbed the "Center of the Universe". Since there wasn’t much room to park our big box on wheels, we got to stretch our legs with a mile walk from the visitor’s center, through town, to the restaurant. Luck was still shining on us as the downpour stopped for our walk there and before leaving to walk back.  Blackboard Cafe took excellent care of us and filled us up for the afternoon's drive. Presumably named for the wall covered completely in blackboard using chalk to highlight specials, with clever quotes, and life-sized cartoon drawings, the small bistro offered an extensive list of lunch sandwiches and tasty sides, attentive service, and even creative cocktail options and several local beers for the non-driver. Blackboard Cafe checked all the boxes for an hour or so break from the road. Wallace, in general, was an interesting place, but one we decided wouldn’t be where we wanted to live one day.  The small town had too many strikingly similar characteristics to our current locale. But it was cool to visit. Continuing our trek towards Missoula, where we planned to stop for the day, we realized how much our dear readers needed more content/ snarky posts to read on our blog.  As much as our bodies were screaming to be let out of the truck for the day, we opted to push on for a long first day to enjoy a more leisurely day tomorrow with a detour through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. I mean, we were right down the road!

Blackboard Cafe in Wallace, Idaho

Wallace, Idaho

Center of the Universe

Yellowstone

Up and out the door before the sun was up to start day two, we left the historic town of Anaconda, Montana in the hopes of making our way to Yellowstone shortly after the gates opened. As luck would have it, our bright yellow tank moving truck didn’t exceed any size requirements.  And since it wasn’t being used for commercial purposes, the friendly park gate attendant, working despite the government shutdown, let us pass.  FOR FREE! 

I spy a Penske

Beaming with excitement to be visiting one of the most popular national parks in the US, and one we had been anxiously waiting to visit for some time, we rolled on. As soon as we entered, we couldn't believe how beautiful it was. All the trees were vibrant shades of orange, yellow, and red. The mountains' rocky walls were above us. Amazing cool weather, even with the cloudless sky. We couldn't have timed our trip through any better. After driving maybe a mile into the park we came upon a massive buffalo! He was practically close enough to the truck to touch (we didn't, of course, 'cause that's just dumb and the signs say not to). But he was right there! Super cool.

Don't pet the Bison

Like most trips, we wished we had more time. Unfortunately, we were hauling someone else’s stuff and couldn’t rightfully spend extra days wandering national parks. We made time to see a couple of easily accessible highlights along our route: Grand Prismatic Spring and Old Faithful. Grand Prismatic Spring was neat to see.  With the cool temps causing lots of steam and the bright sun, we didn’t get the super vibrant, color spectrum pictures you see on the internet, but we did get to stroll around the boardwalk path and see the numerous pools.  We thought it was just one pool, but it was a pretty big area with several steamy baths, each unique in size, depth, and colors.  The ultimate luck of the day may have been our visit to Old Faithful.  Since the government was shutdown, the schedule normally posted with eruption times was not updated, and we only knew she went off roughly every 90 minutes, but had no idea when.  Walking up to the geyser viewing area we could see the crowd had already formed in anticipation.  There was no way to know how long anyone had been posted there to see the geyser erupt, so we found a small clearing with an unobstructed view (and few people), pulled out our phones to capture the moment, and waited.  For like 3 minutes!  The next thing we knew Old Faithful was shooting steaming water into the air.  The whole thing only lasted a glorious minute or two, which was a bit anticlimactic, but at least we hadn’t been waiting an hour!  Perfect timing. We enjoyed the rest of the stop picking up souvenirs and some treats.  The beautiful weather was perfect for eating our lunch under the trees, glowing from our fortunes and stuffing our faces.  The next couple hours took us through amazing scenery.  The leaves were changing, the buffalo were roaming, the sun was shining, and we were all smiles.

Yellowstone Springs

Old Faithful

Grand Teton

Yellowstone and Grand Teton are ridiculously close to each other.  Seven miles along the John D. Rockefeller Memorial Highway from the southern exit of Yellowstone to the northern entrance of Grand Teton.  They really might as well be connected.  Teton wasn’t as massive truck friendly limiting our viewing stops.  We stopped at Jackson Lake and walked along the beach taking in the Teton Mountains for a bit to take pictures and collect a rock for our jar.  The parking for Jenny Lake was full and too small for our oversized ride, and the Colter Bay Visitor Center had closed for the season, but we still made the most of it, stopping here and there at available turnouts to take in the views.  Even had we not been able to stop anywhere the drive through the park would have been worth the time. All the mountains, lakes, and trees were incredible this time of year. 

Jackson Lake

Grand Tetons in the Fall

We’ve already decided we are taking the RV up in the fall for a trip to spend a few days and do the whole camping/hiking thing. For this segment, our overnight stay was in Jackson, WY.  We didn’t get to see much of it, of course, as the Penske had to stay with us.  Aly and I cleaned ourselves up and strolled over to The Blue Lion for bites.  Dinner was lovely.  The food and service were great. As were the cocktails.  We walked so it was fine.  I got adventurous and ordered the elk tenderloin special, while Aly stuck to the beef. We also splurged on the huckleberry tiramisu too, so it was a good thing we did walk!  Mostly, we just enjoyed the company while dining al fresco. The rest of the way home didn’t offer much else of note. The couple hours' drive after Jackson gave us a last bit of true scenery.  Except for a short stretch through northern Colorado, the rest was the same dreary, flat, and brown drive we have come to be used to.  But the first couple days had us tempted to buy lottery tickets just to see.  We must be more Irish than we thought!