June 18 - June 24
*** Please note: Some of the images provided in this blog are taken from our cell phone since we don't always have the ability to carry around our equipment outside of planned sessions.
9 weeks have now been completed on our U.S. Tour and we are now continuing to work our way back across the country to complete the final third of the Tour. Since we first created this tour, we had been looking forward to this stretch of the trip as an opportunity to visit and explore Yellowstone National Park and the area surrounding the massive park. We stayed at an RV park just south of West Yellowstone in Island Park, ID. Up until this point of our journey, we have not had to detour much from our original schedule. Unfortunately, while in Yellowstone we had a helicopter tour cancelled on us on three separate occasions due to various reasons which altered each day's plan and generally created a domino effect on each day afterwards as a result. We did what we could to make the best of each day knocking out much important editing and office work in the AM while waiting on a green light for the helicopter tour then taking the afternoon to explore.
We spent our first afternoon heading into Yellowstone via the West Entrance and were able to see the Lower & Midway Geyser Basins with the highlight of the day being Grand Prismatic Spring. Such amazing hues of blue and orange are found in these hot springs. We capped off the day with a visit to old faithful and the surrounding geysers while we waited for the faithful scheduled eruption. We also saw a Bison relaxing in a dirt pile nearby the geyser. The next day, we took another stab at salvaging our day and this time visited the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone. The discovery center was a nice was to see some grizzly bears & wolves up close and they also cycle their otters and bears periodically throughout the day hiding food within the exhibits which encourages the bears to actively search for food which was a unique change of experience for anyone who has ever visited a zoo or such exhibit only to find the animals sleeping away. The next day we were determined to get in some sort of adventure since we were unsure if we would end up on our helicopter ride, so we went white water rafting. We enjoyed the water trip and saw a pair of bald eagles and a marmot while on the water. We then headed back into Yellowstone for a visit to Mammoth Hot Springs and a scenic ride through the park back towards our campsite. On our final day, we headed down towards Jackson Hole to visit the Grand Teton park and stopped for quick zip down the mountain coaster at Snow King Mountain before driving into the park.
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After our stay in Yellowstone, we drove on through Wyoming to Devil's Towers. We set up camp at Devils Tower KOA which was literally on the border to the National Park and features a nightly showing of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. We had a few evenings with rain plus a photo session which unfortunately kept us from experiencing the movie with the tower as part of the atmosphere. In addition to exploring the Devil's Tower national park, we also were able to spend the day to drive out to experience Black Hills South Dakota and the Badlands. We took a helicopter tour over the Badlands to make up for our missed Yellowstone helicopter tour. We stopped to do a drive through animal tour. We also stopped to see Mount Rushmore while traveling through the Black Hills and then stopped in Deadwood where we took a historic tour of an old Brothel and won $150 at the casino while killing some time before our tour started.
During our stop in Devil's Tower, WY we had a fashion session and were able to use the tower as our backdrop for part of the session which was a great addition to our tour with such an iconic monument. We were also able to utilize some of the additional nearby Wyoming landscape for a variety of looks.
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