THAT TIME I RODE 100 MILES ON THE BACK OF A SNOWMOBILE.

we divirted off our path to seattle specifically for the opportunity to tour yellowstone. now, when i called to ask if the park was open, they said that the way to see it when it is winter is by snowmobile. as in, i thought it was the only way.

so, we put on our warmest clothes and woke up early to get a quick 10-minute course in how to operate a snowmobile and we were off. i was sorely unprepared for just how cold 15 degrees would feel, especially when zipping along at 30 miles per hour.

but! within five minutes, an awesome sighting: a giant elk! photo by b, he is very proud.

my view the entire time.

being inside the park with nary another soul in sight {beyond the other couple with us and our tour guide} was pretty incredible.

and, the bison were hanging out in the street. is this big guy not totally giving us the side eye?!

by noon, we had made it to old faithful. i should mention that by this point, i had seen the "snow coaches", aka buses on monster truck wheels. i have never been given a look so sympathetic than from these folks all warm in their bus as we whizzed by, tears streaming down my face and freezing onto my cheeks.

but, we got an hour at old faithful to go inside and chug two steaming cups of the best hot chocolate i have ever have while waiting for old faithful to do his thing.

and do it he did! it was very cool to see in person. and mind blowing to think that they can time it down to a few-minute window when he will blow.

from there we stopped at paint pots and more geysers. and our tour guide remarked that in the summer you would be jam packed on the trails with other visitors and have to wait your turn to even catch a glimpse at all the things we got to stop and stare at for as long as we wanted.

so, i guess what i'm saying is even though the sub-freezing temps had me the coldest i'd ever been, and subsequently gave me the plague for two weeks, it was all worth it to see the beauty of yellowstone.

YELLOWSTONE.

after a quick day one and an easy day two, we pulled into yellowstone national park! the only place you can stay in the park is the mammoth hot springs hotel. what to say about this place?! ... i'll just let the next photo illustrate the experience:

straight from "the shining", right?! it actually wasn't that bad, although we weren't aware they didn't offer wifi OR any cell phone service, sooo.

the actual hot spring! funny story: we had super researched going to the hot springs in colorado {because it was on my summer in denver bucket list}, so i just assumed that all hot springs are the same and you can, you know, get in them. i had my bathing suit all ready and then we learned these are like sulfur lava pools. so, you don't even get close to them.

obvi these ladies did not get the memo.

i was colder than i appear.

then, we paid $12 for an hour of wifi so we could let our family and friends know that we were alive. and we had a wonderful dinner in the fancy dining house.

but, wait, there's more! here's just a preview of the ridiculousness that is to come tomorrow. i'm calling my fashion sense here "homeless chic". it's about to be all the rage, i am sure.

ON THE ROAD.

as you know, we made it to seattle. here's a recap of what a 1,496-mile journey in the car looks like, courtesy of my 1,496 photos.

so, wyoming is like a hot second outside of denver. and the beginning of wyoming is booooring. we had originally planned to leave on sunday, but we heard about incoming storms and decided to move our trip up a day. after cleaning up the apartment, we hit the road to casper, wyoming. i can't remember who recommended casper - so don't be offended if it was you - but it was moderately awful. the restaurant we went to, which shall not be named, served me brown, wilted iceberg lettuce touted as a salad, and then i was so scared at the hotel that i woke up every hour to make sure our car hadn't been broken into. #dramatweets

needless to say i woke b up super early to get on the road. it was worth it to see the still of the morning.

the driver.

the passenger.

have you ever seen the movie "the mist"? me neither, but i know the plot involves this crazy killer mist. i was 100 percent sure we were driving into a murderous fog and were about to never be heard from again.

and then we were in said deadly smog/fog for an hour and we indeed did not see the light of day or have cell service the entire time. is that not the weirdest?

dundundunnn: big sky! wyoming turned out to be much more beautiful than i gave it credit for.

can you guess what this is? our first sign we were nearing yellowstone!

scenes from that trip on the blog tomorrow.