Island Park Getaway

For our next adventure we decided to go to Island Park and stay at my Grandpa's cabin!  I went up to Idaho Falls a few days early to visit my parents.  I had an awesome time with my mom.  I'm so glad that we are so close.  I love her so much.  We went shopping, to the gym, relaxed at the pool, and went fishing with my dad!  I love my dad so much too!  I appreciate all the advice he gives me and all the help he provides.

What a wonderful weekend to just hang out with my parents!

Jake came up to IF and picked me up to head up to Island Park on Sunday night, the 15th.  I haven't been up to the cabin since I was in high school, so I was excited to go and for Jake to come!  

The cabin!

Kitchen

Upstairs loft

Lots of beds so we could have friends come!? Any takers??

This is my kind of camping :)

The next day we went to Yellowstone National Park.  It had been a long time since I have been.  Jake and I started making a list of all the license plates from all the states that we saw.  You'll never guess how many we saw in one day.... 47 out of 50 states!  How AWESOME!

We drove around the loop in Yellowstone and stopped at some cool places along the way.  I'll show you in pictures, since I took a TON!

We stopped at Old Faithful and waited to see the amazing show....

Whoa!

Guess who we ran into?! Loryn and Mike!  Lor-dizzle my old roomie!

Cascade Falls

This is right before the Upper Falls.  There is so much water going over the falls!  It is amazing.

Lower Falls`

We also stopped at some stinky geysers, I won't put pictures :)  They smelled so bad!  Called the Mud Volcano, Sour Lake, Churning Cauldron, and Dragon Mouth Spring.

Now for the wildlife....  We saw quite a variety!

Buffalo

Elk

Moose

SCARY! But I wanted to see a bear!

We think this was a bear.... across the river, that little brown spot, but we weren't sure.

and this ferocious beast!

We had a great day at Yellowstone, headed back to our for dinner and a little relaxation.  The next day we decided to float down Big Springs.  We rented tubes and floated the 3 hour float.  It was so awesome, just sitting in the sun and soaking up the rays.  After our float, we went into West Yellowstone for some ice cream and shopping.  We had a good dinner at the cabin and a fun last night.

We got up thursday morning and drove back to Idaho Falls, picked up some stuff, drove to Logan, got some other things and drove to Salt Lake!  We had to be in Salt Lake by Wednesday night because I had orientation for school on Thursday and Friday the 19th and 20th.  Jake came with me to spend our last few days together.  I'm grateful for my sweet husband for supporting my decision to go back to school.  I love him so dang much.

I'll tell you about school in my next post.... gotta get back to the books :(