Day 3-Road Trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Park

So, first of all, good news!! I found the journal that I had written in detailing the trip, so when we actually get to the part of us actually being in the park, I'll have much better detail to throw in. Alright, Day 3, the date was June 19, 2009. I guess I will mention here that we took this trip towards the end of June so the hubby and I could be away somewhere special for our anniversary. Late June is not exactly peak season for the parks, mostly because it is still quite chilly in the park, but more on that later. Ok, so we woke up around 6 am that day, and there was dew everywhere. Lots of dew = a wet tent. We tried drying it the best we could before getting back on the road. We got a little bit of a better look at the Lake Anita State Park on our way out. Here are some pictures.

Kelly and I really took a liking to Iowa, especially because of these . . . .

Windmills!! Yay for alternative energy!!

Ok, next state up, Nebraska.

I'm gonna tell it to you straight, Nebraska was long and boring. And after our trip back through it on the way home, I declared it the "worst state in the union". More on that later. By the way, if you are a native of Nebraska, feel free to try to convince me to change my mind. Maybe a box of Omaha steaks will do the trick :)

After we finally made it through Nebraska, we made it to the state of our destination, Wyoming!!

Some pictures of a little bit of our drive.

Yay for hills and rocks and mountains in the distance!!  Unfortunately, there was no way we were gonna make it to the park at any decent hour to pitch our tent, so we decided to stay in the city that was right where we start heading up the highway to the park. That city was Rawlins. There was a KOA there so we decided we could stay there for the night. There were some ominous looking clouds in the distance, so we decided to stay in one of the little KOA cabins. The deal with the cabins are that you have to provide your own linens, and of course they don't have their own bathroom. You have to use the shared ones. But this was no big deal to us, since we've been camping and using shared bathrooms already.
A couple of pics inside the cabin at KOA.

We made our dinner, played some cards, and turned in. We were super excited about getting to the Tetons the next day.

Day 2-Road Trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks

So, after a good night of camping in Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, we woke up and cooked ourselves some breakfast. The tire store wasn't going to be open until 9 am, so we thought we would go explore the park a little. Neither Kelly or I had ever seen any of the Great Lakes and now we had a chance to take a look at Lake Michigan!!

Here is what we saw.

It was sort of a gray morning, but we still had fun exploring. The shore of the lake was covered with smooth round stones. Here is the hubby skipping stones.

And the hubby collecting stones to make me something sweet.

And because I love fish, I can't forget this.

Eventually we made our way back to the tire store, thinking things would be quick. Not quite. We there much longer than we wanted to be, but we finally made back on the road.

Next state up, Illinois.

And then Iowa.

And Iowa was actually very lovely. Lots of rolling green hills. This is as far as we would make it on our 2nd day. We decided to set up shop at Lake Anita State Park. It was a week night, but there were a lot more people there than we would have thought, which was nice. Here is a picture of our campsite with our tent pitched.

A quick picture that evening of the view from our campsite.

And a picture of the hubby and I, happy to be on this great vacation together.

Here is the website to Lake Anita State Park in Iowa: http://www.iowadnr.gov/parks/state_park_list/lake_anita.html

I really have to commend Iowa's Department of Natural Resources. They had the best website as far as information for their parks go.

Up next, day 3, we make finally make it Wyoming!!