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Favorite National Park you have visited

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  • YellowSnow
    YellowSnow Moderator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 37,695 Founders Club
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    dnc said:

    So for context we spent 41 days on the road and I think ended up seeing bits and pieces of 21 American National Parks plus one primary Canadian park (Banff) plus sort of passing through about 3 other Canadian parks. Big quantity over quality trip, we wanted to see as much as possible. It was the wife, myself and three kids, then aged 7, 6 and 2. We put almost 12,000 miles on the minivan round trip. Left Memphis day before Memorial Day, spent about 12 days getting to Seattle (up through TN, AR, MO, KS, started site seeing in Colorado, NW Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, Alberta and BC), 8 days in Seattle, a couple nights on the Oly peninsula, and another 20 days getting home (through Oregon, California, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, then basically done siteseeing and just hustling back through NE NM, TX panhandle, OK, AR, and TN to home).

    Rocky Mountain Parks

    Grand Teton: We sadly didn't have much time set aside for Grand Teton, it was kind of just a "passing through" station for us. One of the big goals of this trip was to see as much wildlife as possible for the kids (the older two had Bingo sheets made up with 25 animals each they had selected that they were hoping to see on the trip and the first one to fill their sheet up first won - this was both brilliant and a little too brilliant. At one point we saw a humpback whale and my then 7 year old shrugged because it wasn't on his list). With wildlife a big goal we targeted a lot more tim in Yellowstone than Grand Teton. I can't reiterate strongly enough how big of a mistake this was.

    So Grand Teton...holy shit! I knew the mountains were spectittilytacular. We had been there a couple times as kids and my little brother and I called them the Grand Tittytons because that's what middle school boys do. Little did we know how historically accurate our horniness was but I digress. I did not realize what a wildlife sanctuary this place was. We passed through on our way into Yellowstone and came across a massive bunch of cars parked hastily on both sides of the road. We knew something big was up. So I dropped the wife and kiddos, drove down to find a place to park and came back to find this.




    That's my daughter looking through some binoculars a generous lady let her borrow as they lined up at the ranger established perimeter. Why did the ranger establish a perimeter? Because





    there was a Mama grizz hanging out with her three cubs. Sorry for the shitty photography but apparently I was so excited I mostly just got video and no pics so these are screen caps cause this site has no good video function. This was a big deal for us because one of the biggest goals of all for this trip was to see a bear in the wild. I had never seen one. More importantly my dad (not on the trip) had never seen one, so I pumped the kids up before the trip "we are hopefully going to see a bear and when we do we're gonna call grandpa and tell him "we saw a bear before you did". And sure enough this was pretty much our first chance to see one and we got not one but four and grizz rather than black bear at that. Huge moment for us, even though we were aways away and surrounded by people.

    We went into Yellowstone for the night and the next day (see below) then came back down through Grand Teton towards a little place we were staying at on the west side of Teton Pass in Victor Idaho. On the trip south we stopped in the park to get something to eat and came across a mama fox and three kits. Again shitty screen caps:





    So that was fun.

    Then rolling out after dinner we saw another grizz (this one a solo male). Didn't get any good pics of him though but by now we were really on a roll.

    We also came back the next day to go to the Visitor Center to get the kids passports' stamped because both ways going through GT we were too late in the day to catch the VC. And on the way back from the VC we saw a baby moose nuzzling under its mom.



    Also there are mountains there.



    So yeah I guess for some of the better park experiences like this the parks will need their own poast and it won't even work to group them together.

    TL; DR: Grand Teton is the tits and you should spend more time there than we did.

    Grand Teton is da tits. I used only live 4 hrs south and fished the Snake a number of times in the park. The Snake River Cut is a pretty fish @chuck . Sensitive though and likes nice clean, mountain water.

    Never saw a grizzly 'bar though. That's pretty special.

    One of my teammates from college, used to guide trips up the Grand Teton.
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  • dnc
    dnc Member Posts: 56,855
    Yellowstone - BRB, Old Faithful
    Bonus park: Banff

    We drove north to Calgary then west to Banff which was the place I was most excited to visit on the whole trip. I've wanted to go here basically as long as I've known it existed. First stop was the Banff Gondola, cool ride and views from the top.



    We stopped at a little street fair in the town of Banff which is in the NP (Canadian parks apparently work a little different) and at from a couple food trucks. It was a cool vibe, great weather, nice people watching, beautiful scenery. After dinner we drove up to Lake Louise where our hotel was. Sadly it was cloudy and a bit rainy when we arrived so our Lake Louise views weren't the best but still worth seeing.



    We had planned to get up early and drive up to Moraine Lake but we called an audible and it was the right call. There's a limited number of spots available at the top and allegedly you can have to wait hours for them to let you onto the road up during the daytime but when we went in late evening we almost had it to ourselves. No crowd issues at all. When we got the top we found it mostly iced over.




    One of the coolest experiences playing around at that frozen lake in the Valley of the Ten Peaks.

    Overall Banff was a little bit of a disappointment, I think just because Glacier had been so spectacular, and Banff was our first major strikeout on wildlife. But the gondola was a very cool experience and Moraine Lake was worth every pemmy. If I ever go back I want to be sure it's not coming right after Many Glacier.
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  • YellowSnow
    YellowSnow Moderator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 37,695 Founders Club
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    dnc said:

    Bonus park: Banff

    We drove north to Calgary then west to Banff which was the place I was most excited to visit on the whole trip. I've wanted to go here basically as long as I've known it existed. First stop was the Banff Gondola, cool ride and views from the top.



    We stopped at a little street fair in the town of Banff which is in the NP (Canadian parks apparently work a little different) and at from a couple food trucks. It was a cool vibe, great weather, nice people watching, beautiful scenery. After dinner we drove up to Lake Louise where our hotel was. Sadly it was cloudy and a bit rainy when we arrived so our Lake Louise views weren't the best but still worth seeing.



    We had planned to get up early and drive up to Moraine Lake but we called an audible and it was the right call. There's a limited number of spots available at the top and allegedly you can have to wait hours for them to let you onto the road up during the daytime but when we went in late evening we almost had it to ourselves. No crowd issues at all. When we got the top we found it mostly iced over.




    One of the coolest experiences playing around at that frozen lake in the Valley of the Ten Peaks.

    Overall Banff was a little bit of a disappointment, I think just because Glacier had been so spectacular, and Banff was our first major strikeout on wildlife. But the gondola was a very cool experience and Moraine Lake was worth every pemmy. If I ever go back I want to be sure it's not coming right after Many Glacier.

    I've fished the Bow river in Banff downstream a few miles from the falls.
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  • YellowSnow
    YellowSnow Moderator, Swaye's Wigwam Posts: 37,695 Founders Club
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    dnc said:

    Here's the rough overall route btw if anyone cares


    You missed the lead. Sad.
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  • dnc
    dnc Member Posts: 56,855
    Yellowstone - BRB, Old Faithful
    YellowSnow said:

    dnc said:

    Here's the rough overall route btw if anyone cares


    You missed the lead. Sad.
    Talm bout Crater Lake I presume?
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