Summer Family Trip to Colorado, Wyoming, & South Dakota

This summer we decided to make a trip out of a work meeting my husband needed to attend in Wyoming. We decided to take almost two weeks, since we were driving and my husband could take his work "with him" so to speak. It was our big trip of the year.

We first went to Aurora Colorado, spent the night and got up to go to the Denver Botanical Gardens. I am a big garden lover, and a member of our local botanical garden in Missouri. So there was a great discount there. My boys don't like the garden as much as me, but were great sports. It was lovely and super beautiful. I would very much highly recommend the Denver Botanical Garden. I think my very favorite part was the Monet Water Lily Garden. Absolutely stunning and no pictures do it justice.

After this, we went to the Rocky Mountain National Park. Talk about absolutely breathtaking views. We saw lakes that we wished we could live near, and wildflowers galore. Streams, peaks, snow capped mountains beyond the treeline and many different wildlife. Stunning. One of my favorite places in the world.

Our next stop was the Grand Tetons and Jackson Hole in Wyoming. None of us had ever seen this part of the country before. After leaving the Rocky Mountain National Forest, we continued to try and take the scenic route on every part of our trip that we could. It was so worth it. It was very hard for me to not take pictures of everything.

The Grand Tetons were amazing and majestic. Jackson Hole is wonderful, and we enjoyed a float trip in a river that took a good hour or more. Very nice, I absolutely loved it. We enjoyed the downtown Jackson Hole area as well as the surrounding areas. There is very beautiful wildlife as well. We saw buffalo, moose, a wolf, deer, elk, and bald eagles and more.

Its hard to say this, but I keep coming back to it..... Yellowstone may be the favorite part of the trip for me. I knew there were geysers and other pretty things, but I had no idea. I simply loved it. There was no way to do the place justice, and the wildlife was breathtaking. The water, creeks, streems, rock structures, back roads, rapids, falls and everything else seemed to want to take my breath away. I was in love...

One thing that struck me was the amount of dead trees however. Not completely sure how much is attributed to rust and other diseases trees can get. compared to fire damage. We saw bears, and our favorite thing was to see a mother and her baby near the big lake. That was on our last night, and it was something to top all other things off!

We got to see Mt. Rushmore for the first time in person. Absolutely gorgeous and stunning. The history they are celebrating is astounding as well. The patriotism it generates makes one proud to be an American! So thankful to all that made that possible.

We were traveling through all these places when the 71st Sturgis Bike Rally was taking place. We had no idea how much fun that would be to observe and watch these massive amounts of bikers come from all over.

We also went to Wind Cave and took a tour. I can't say enough about all of South Dakota that we saw. Gorgeous country for sure.

The Badlands was another place we drove through and stopped several times. A whole different place that was beautiful in its own way. We got to get out a few times, and we only wished we had more time.

Nature is so amazing to me, I can never seem to get enough. It speaks to my heart and soul, and I feel so grateful to be able to experience it the way I do. It means the world to me to have gone with my family too. I could go on and on with the things we did, but that would take all day. Like the sulphur smell and the literal heat we felt around many of the gurgling and bubbling geysers! Astounding!

Without any hesitation, I would highly recommend any of these places to go and visit if you ever get the chance. There is so much beauty, rare and worth knowing about in these states. It does something good for the soul.