Way Out West

It’s an amazing place!

The Wide, Wonderful West… is really something.

Lucky me, I’ve been to Yellowstone about 5 times, since I was stuck in SLC for college. I made lots of hitch hiking trips from Denver to SLC.

But the assortment of amazing National Parks out west is impressive.

Jackson Hole is cool, Glacier is awesome… and then a little further up the map a ways is Banff. And the many wonders of Canada. And that’s just the start of the NorthWest… there’s also parks all over the USA.

Yoho Parks… where we learn that the most primitive fossils on earth were discovered on a high mountain peak.

Great camping in Banff… they even have ‘overflow’ campgrounds, so if the first campground is full, they can open another 100 unit campground.

Jasper is amazing… nothing like a glacier to make a cool snowy summer awesome. Riding the snow coach mobile up mountains in July is really something.

I liked when a busload of Japanese tourists got off their tour bus and encountered some amazing elk in the parking lot at Banff. Armed with cameras, the Japanese braced for battle… hiding behind car doors… fearing the never seen before elk… cameras clicked furiously. But the noble elk only wandered peacefully off through the parking lot, pursuing greener grass.

And the only problem with driving the Icefields Highway is it kind of makes the rest of the West look almost disappointing in comparison. Thundering waterfalls crest against the high wayside, the postcard perfect glacier snows bank up against the mountains.

And that’s when one has to walk the beach at Olympic National Park in Washington State… listening to the surf at Rialto Beach to recover.

And then recover with a stack of pancakes in the Dew Drop Inn in Forks.