The West truly is wild. As in, blow-your-mind-with-its-stunning-splendor wild. Read on for our travels through South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, and Montana!
South Dakota: Don’t let the name fool you; Badlands National Park is good. So good. Picture: for hundreds of miles you drive through rolling prairie (daydreaming – no doubt – about Laura Ingels Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie) and suddenly the earth opens up into a vast and staggering canyonland, striated with bands that are unbelievable shades of red, yellow and purple. Our drive through the park was safari-like, as we stopped at intervals to gape at yipping prairie dogs, meandering big-horn sheep, and loping bison. Our pro-tip for post-park refreshments: stop at the kitschy Wall Drug store (you can’t miss it there are signs for literally hundreds of miles) for 5 cent coffee (you read that right!) and donuts.
Colorado: Don’t hold us to it, but we think Colorado might have the best town names of any state: Steamboat Springs, Telluride, Aspen, Golden, Breckenridge, Vail. And the mountains there aren’t messing around; the state has more “fourteeners” (i.e. mountains above 14,000 feet in elevation) than any other! We saw some for ourselves in Rocky Mountain National Park, home of the highest-elevation National Park visitor center, and hiked some lower-elevation trails. After a few days in the wild, we explored Denver with local friends taking in the sights (Red Rocks Amphitheater), food (Denver Biscuit Company), and drink (too many craft beers to name!).
Wyoming: Whoever wrote America the Beautiful must have spent some time in Wyoming. Saffron-colored wildflower bushes lined the roadway like nature’s yellow brick road, with purple, craggy mountains hunched in the distance. Bleach-blonde prairie grass waved in the late summer breeze like underwater seagrass. In Grand Tetons National Park we camped next to babbling snowmelt streams while the aspen shimmying around us turned golden. See what we mean? Magical.
And Yellowstone National Park – where it seems like everywhere you go sulphuric spirals swirl like tea-steam – is nothing but other-worldly. It’s one of those places that leaves you dumbstruck and asking “what exactly am I looking at?” Our jaws were on the floor for the three days we spent there, even during off-the-beaten-trail hikes like to Mystic Falls.
Soon after leaving Yellowstone it occurred to us that we’d crossed into Montana. Inky blue mountains swelled around us, and after a persistent drizzle on our first day cleared we saw that Big Sky we’d heard so much about. And, folks, it is BIG. We were stunned: by Glacier National Park where we hiked the Avalanche Lake Trail, Johns Lake Loop, McDonald Lake; by glassy lakes ringed with sloping, tree-carpeted mountains; by the paradox of feeling remote and alone but cozy at the same time. That cozy feeling was helped, too, by places like MAP Brewing and Treeline Coffee Roasters in Bozeman.
We could’ve easily spent weeks longer exploring the west. But, the oncoming fall was fast approaching, so we made for the coast to round out our northern-latitude adventures.
Pale Yellow Van 