Local couple's vacation 'Rockin'

A local couple reported Saturday that their recent vacation to the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks was "wonderful."

By Nathan Scott
Unassociated Press

Rebecca and Nathan Scott, a young couple from Davis County, traveled to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks this past week. Only able to spend three nights in the parks, the couple feels that they were still able to see enough to make their trip worth it. "We spent one full day in the canyons area, one day in the geyser region, and the last day in the Teton's," said Nathan. "We even got to do tons of hiking!!!!" added Rebecca, clearly pleased with the 25+ miles total they had accumulated throughout the adventure.

Most of their hiking was in and around the beautiful canyons area, often called "The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone". In addition to the many vista points along the north and south rims - some of the points were part of steep, half-mile jaunts down and up the canyon's banks - they were able to complete a "good hike", as Rebecca calls them, of 10-11 miles that goes past Cascade Lake and up to Observation Peak. "I was really happy we were able to do a good long hike!" said Rebecca, "this was one of the first good hikes we've done all summer." Nathan, who definitely enjoyed the scenery and the views along the hike, was not as enthusiastic about its length, however, due to his sedentary preferences which leave his feet and legs more prone to aches and sores. "It got pretty painful towards the end of the hike and especially the next couple of days afterward," he complained, with the roundish, pussy, souvenirs still showing on the balls of his feet.

On Friday the couple visited almost every geyser basin along the Firehole River. In the Old Faithful Geyser area they were lucky enough to see eruptions of the basin's namesake, as well as the Lion Group, the Anenome Geyser, and the Castle Geyser. Following that, they saw the Midway Geyser Basin, the Lower Geyser Basin, Biscuit Basin, and several random thermal features along the way. Last of all they visited the West Thumb Geyser basin where the evening lighting made for some awesome reflection-filled photographs. As they returned to the campsite, the combination of sunset, rivers, and meadows was equally picturesque. "Man!, It's just so beautiful!," said Rebecca.

Their final day of vacation was spent mostly in the Grand Teton National Park (if you don't count all the travel time arriving and returning home). 'Majestic', 'awe-inspiring', and 'gorgeous' were a few of the words they used to describe these huge rocky masterpieces of nature. With the lakes, streams, and greenery adding extra interest to the park, there were plenty of beautiful scenes in the Tetons.


The couple has released many of the photos from their trip to those wishing to view them, but due to the high volume of pictures, they could not all be published with this article. To see the photos, interested parties can go here.

For those who have wondered how the couple's time was spent between the main attractions of the vacation, they had this to say: "Well, there was a lot of time spent in the car. To make that more enjoyable, we checked out The Fellowship of the Ring audio book on CD from the library and got through most of the 16 discs during the trip. We just ate simple meals for breakfast and lunch - french toast, cold cereal, bagels, sandwiches, etc.- and ate and the cafeteria or fast food joints for dinner except one night we made spaghetti on our camp stove and had s'mores by the fire. You have to have s'mores when you go camping. It's just one of those unwritten rules."

Yellowstone is famous for the abundant wildlife. There was no shortage of sightings on the Scotts' trip either. "The coolest thing we saw was the heard of elk," said Nate. "There were a few with huge racks and several babies." Rebecca added that they also "saw a few osprey really close. I could have gotten even better pictures if I had had my longer zoom lens on sooner."