I don’t get a lot of time to go on vacation. I work a full time job, I work on my photography business for another full time job, my weekends are packed full this year without another break until October! We had 2 Vacation trips this summer and those have been my only true days off. One was our trip to Seattle. (Where I still second shot 2 weddings, so is it really a break?) And today is the second trip.

It is no secret that I love to camp. So Trevor got major bonus points when surprised me for my birthday with a new tent and reservations at a campground in Yellowstone. I know he loves me when he does things like this because he is not a big camper. When Trevor does something though, he goes at it 100%. So when he was buying a tent, it wasn’t like he was just going to go down to your local REI and get whatever 4 person tent looked good. Oh no. Not Trevor. He got on thewirecutter.com to find the BEST tent of all time. (This is totally a Trevor move.)

I wish I was exaggerating, but our tent is literally the best tent ever. It takes 3 MINUTES to set up. I’m not joking. See for yourself. 

Yellowstone is about a 5 hour drive. It is gorgeous. It is refreshing. It is calming. I loved every minute of this trip. I *might* have even shed a tear or two when we were leaving the park. Life gets busy. We are proud of being busy.  We enjoy being busy. But the weekends Trevor and I take to slow down and ground ourselves, the haze of “busy” seems to clear away. We realize more and more how spending quality time together continues to strengthen our marriage and make beautiful memories. Our trips don’t have to be fancy or elaborate. Just heartfelt and real. Time away (without much cell service) in Yellowstone was just what the doctor ordered.

Who ever makes the warning signs like this page and print materials for this park did an excellent job. 🙂

We went to the park over Memorial Day weekend in May. Yes there was still snow on the ground in some parts of the park. It made the nights a little chilly but made the days PERFECT temperature for hiking and walking around.  We packed and was prepared for the chilly nights. What we were not prepared for was snow in our fire pit. That took some creative engineering to get a fire started in the pit.

Yellowstone had several major fires burning through acres of land in 1988. You can see a lot of the scars still.

We saw buffalo galore.
This lady insisted on taking a 15 minute video of Mammoth Falls. It was a little excessive. 
We saw a total of 5 bears. 🙂 3 Grizzly bears and a black bear momma and her cub!

And I thought I looked cool with my 70-200mm lens (the lens on the strap around the guys neck)….. until these guys showed up. Those are some serious telephoto lenses.
Who knew that Yellowstone had some of the best root beer around??? I don’t drink soda often at all. But when I do, I find that I crave root beer.

This is what roads are made for, right?

 

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