This was so cool. Our shadows projected on a mountain a couple hundred feet away in the Badlands.
After our South Dakota adventure, we head out to Yellowstone. I have the most mixed feelings about Yellowstone as perhaps any place I have ever been. We arrived to see beautiful mountaintops and streams, and geysers and trees, and beautiful scenes that could have come out of a storybook. This was coupled with a feeling like I was somewhere in between downtown Los Angeles and Disneyland...they took one of the most beautiful places in our country and commercialized the hell out of it. Hotels, gift shops, boardwalks, and restaurants surrounded some of the most pristine areas of the park. One one hand, I love the accessibility for people to come and see nature, but it was just too much. Fortunately, it started raining and all the tourists went back to the hotel to sip on mojitos by the pool. This was our chance!! Donning our ponchos and warm gear, we set off on the trail for an awesome hike along a ridge to an overlook (of course we didn't bring our cameras for that one :P).
After Yellowstone, we went to the Grand Tetons for our last stop. I'm definitely going back here before I go back to Yellowstone. Beautiful towering glaciers on mountains with pristine lakes, wildlife, and really cool people that were there to enjoy nature. We had planned on doing a loop around Phelps Lake, but the ranger told us about a 30 foot jumping rock in the area, so we decided to do that. Once we got there, we talked to some people that were jumping and watched a few people go. After climbing up to the top, I got the usual feeling of terrifying sickness in my stomach (inherited from my fear of heights as a kid), but after pumping myself up, it was jumping time! What an awesome feeling to jump off those rocks and plunge into that searing cold water from 30 feet up. The jump of the trip definitely goes to Melissa who rocked the complete butt/back flop. When she came up, we could tell she didn't know whether to laugh or cry and I think both of those happened...wish I had a pic :P After lizard-ing it on the rock for awhile, we decided that it was time to go with about 30 hours before we had to return the car.
We took off on a 15 hour drive through the night trading off sleepy drivers for (mostly) awake passengers and made it to Davis at about 9:00AM. After hanging with the family for a bit, Melissa and Doc took off for San Diego, and got there in time to return the car. No damage, no extra fees!! Even though Doc did send me a text saying that we had to talk about the car...(what a jerk).
It's kind of unreal to think that our trip is over and how it flew by so fast, but it was really the perfect time for what we did and I'm happy to be home in Davis hanging out with the family and sleeping in a bed (for 14 hours last night).
It proved much more difficult than we thought to do consistent posting throughout the trip, but I'll let everyone know when we have our photo album up. Pictures speak much more clearly than any post I could do but all I can say is WOW!! What an amazing trip...I can say with confidence that I have no idea what I'm going to do now after I move out of my apartment in San Diego, but after a month of having some beautiful experiences in cities and in nature and meeting some beautiful people, I got a lot of perspective on what I want to accomplish with my life. If there's one thing this trip taught me it's to float with intention and a positive mindset and keep my eyes open for my path to float to. Thanks everyone for following our trip; it means a lot to know that people care about what we are doing :)
We might continue this blog or another blog, but I'll let everyone know for sure. Right now, most of my effort will be going towards reclaimtogether.org and finding out where I'm going to live. Every one of us has infinite possibility for what we can do in life, so lets work together and support each other and make it happen!
Much love,
David
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