As everyone knows change is inevitable. We were originally planning a trip to Italy to attend a friends destination wedding on the Amalfi coast; and just for kicks add in Rome, Florence, and Venice. Our friends wedding plans changed so we needed to change gears and do so quickly. We put Italy on hold and decided to visit another series of National Parks as we have done in the past several years. Most of our viewers recall (see my Facebook Timeline) our trips to Denali, Wrangell-St Elias (<--largest NP in our country and established in 1980), and Glacier Bay in Alaska in 2009. Then in 2011 we had a reunion of sorts for Cindy in Glacier NP in Montana, as well as Banff and Jasper NP in Canada. Last year we had a wonderful trip to Olympic and Mount Rainier National Parks in Washington State.
Since Yellowstone and Grand Teton have always been high on our list it was a easy pick, but required a lot of thought, which included spreading out maps on the dining room table, and this technological marvel called the Internet! January of 2013 is when the Italy trip was shot down and this trip was put into full steam ahead.
While searching Google for lodging in Wyoming we saw advertisements (no wonder Google makes a boat load of money) for Dude Ranches and thought that looks like fun. This was not even part of our thought process when we started this journey, but cool things like this happen! We looked through several available ranches around Jackson Hole and narrowed it down to the all-inclusive Goosewing Ranch near Kelly, WY in the Teton National Forest.
All inclusive in this case includes 2/4/6 hour back country horseback trail rides, fly fishing, rifle and archery ranges, hiking, an ATV assigned to our cabin, and all three square meals for six days. Oh and did I mention breathtaking views in and around the Grand Teton mountains!
Booking this Ranch in January was absolutely the right thing to do since they only have eight cabins and our schedule was limited to the peak season. Key here...the early bird gets the worm!
Now onto lodging in a very busy National Park. In order to get the best experience out of the number one Park in the country we searched through the various accommodations in Yellowstone trying to find a central location for a base camp so that we could spread out our hiking and sightseeing options on all points of the compass. We selected the Canyon Village area and were lucky to book a cabin near this spectacular view!
The other accommodations that we selected involved the western way of life, cowboys, and rodeos. So we researched the Cody, WY area since it was well known for all those things listed above. This is where the Master's class continues. Cody is great but we wanted to find a location half way between Cody and the East entrance to Yellowstone and a jumping off place for our side trips...better known as Cindy finds a new deer trail! We located Wapiti which was perfect for our needs and booked an old (yes that picture was taken last year...jk) travel lodge called the Trail Shop Inn.
From this location we have a 225 mile loop road trip planned that will take us into the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness Area, Gallatin National Forest, Custer National Forest, across into Montana, and back along the Beartooth All-American Road/Chief Joseph Scenic Byway.
This ends our Master's class in travel logistics. Now it's all about the actual journey!
Packing is next...
