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Yellowstone National Park

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We have visited Yellowstone National Park three times over the past 6 years. Each time we visited we got to see plenty of wildlife. I won’t go on and on in this post about Yellowstone. It is an amazing, yet smelly place, to to go visit the inside of a super caldera(you know, the inside of a volcano). Yellowstone is a hot spot for not only buffalo traffic jams, bears being bears, and giant herds of elk; there are also plenty of places to stop and enjoy super heated water and volcanic gases. Our advice is to follow park rules and stay on boardwalks. Stepping off of the boardwalks to get closer to a hot spring can lead to fatal injury.

What I want to talk about is a curiosity. At a location I am not going to disclose inside Yellowstone we experienced seeing something truly strange – each of the three times we visited. Now, this involves elk and only elk. There is a meadow that you can drive by and the main attraction, at least for us, has become a pair of bull elk. The best buds like lounging around, just relaxing and perhaps enjoying watching tourists drive by. Here is the thing about these fellas, they don’t appear to move. It’s not that they aren’t looking around, eating, and what not. It is, each visit we have found them in the same exact spot and doing the same exact thing. Ruminating away and growing this seasons antlers. I’m not kidding, we found them in virtually the same positions.

While we have plenty of excellent pictures of other elk. These guys we far enough from the road to make getting a good shot on our phone camera while we were driving. We were not prepared for something like this. Of course, what are the odds of this even happening? We hope to see them again on our next visit!

Please remember that even elk are wild animals. Do not approach any of the wild animals in the park. Encounters with these and other animals in the park can lead to serious injuries and even death.

For more information visit the Yellowstone National Park website.

Roswell New Mexico

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They are among us. We landed in Roswell in the middle of the night. Coming in from the north on a completely dark highway added to the adventure of it. Just as we’re getting bored the dark horizon lit up with synchronized blinking lights.. the entire field of view was pulsating with red lights. Of course it was just green energy in the form of windmills, but not knowing that at first made it exciting for the bored children in the backseat.

The next morning we headed over to the visitor center where they had Roswell merch and tourist information. After leaving the visitor center we made our way down the street to the International UFO Museum Research Center. The exhibits were informative and entertaining.

The truth is out there and Roswell might be one of the places to find at least part of it. For more information about visiting Roswell check out the Visitor Center website.

I want to believe…

Death Valley National Park

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Must see road trip stops/drives Badwater Basin and Artists Drive. We also saw The Devil’s Golf Course. Badwater Basin is 282 feet below see level and the temperature while we were there was 95 degrees. The temperature outside the park was in the low 70’s, a benefit of visiting during the fall/winter. We found that our older boys did not fully get the big deal about the temperature. We plan to bring them back in the summer sometime in the future.

Badwater Basin.. look in the top left for the sea level marker 282 feet above the basin floor.

What you need to know about Artists Drive.. It’s amazing and there are vehicle size restrictions. The parks stated restriction is less than 25 ft in length. We were happy to be in our Subaru. The drive is 9 miles of winding, dipping and driving through low clearances. The low clearances are why we were happy to not be in our Dodge 2500 with kayak racks on top. It can be done, but it would have stressed us out. Our advice is to believe the signs.. the dips are huge.

The park has plenty to offer and we are hardly scratching the surface here. Use the link at the bottom of this post to visit the park website. During the summer, it is not recommended to get out of your car for any longer than a few minutes – meaning no hiking in the summer. Visiting during the cooler months opens up opportunities to explore the many trails. During our visit we explored the Badwater Basin, because we were not prepared for hiking. There are a few trails in the park, but most routes are cross country. We stuck to the roadside trails.

Badwater Basin.. realizing he would be that deep

What to bring.. It should go without saying, but I’m going to say it. Bring plenty of water, even if you have no plans for hiking. This is the hottest, driest, lowest place in North America. Check the parks website, listed below, before going to find out about closures and know the weather. Flash flooding is an additional hazard that may occur in the park.

Devils Golf Course.

At Devil’s Golf Course large fields of eroded rock salt can been seen. If you listen carefully, you can here the salt crystals exploding due to expanding and contracting with the changes in temperatures. Despite being sharp and pocked we did see some fellow park goers attempting to navigate walking across the salt as well as taking souvenirs. It’s a big no-no, illegal, to take the salt or remove anything from a protected National Park.

Visit the National Park Service Website for more information about Death Valley National Park