Honeymoon Travels

Hello All!

It has been awhile since my last blog post, but so much has happened in the last month! For those of you who don't know, I recently got married on October 3! My husband Aaron and I then went on a road trip for our honeymoon :) I am here to share our ventures with you!

Of course, Covid changed our original honeymoon plans. We were to fly to Maui, Hawaii. As bummed as I was that we had to cancel that trip, we made a plan to road trip out west instead! The weather could not have been any better for our trip - Sunny skies and 70-80 degrees everyday!

States we were in:

Wisconsin | Minnesota | South Dakota | Montana | Wyoming

Our main goal was to hit the National Parks:

-> Badlands National Park

-> Yellowstone National Park

-> Grand Teton National Park

We left Madison, WI on the Monday morning after our wedding. We made lots of stops along the way ( no surprise ;) ) before reaching our first National park, which included:

> Pipestone National Monument in Minnesota

> The Worlds only Corn Palace in South Dakota

> Falls Park in South Dakota

After those few stops, we made it to the Badlands! I could not wait to go to Badlands National Park. I've always heard it is a very underrated national park - and I can assure you it did not disappoint! We saw the most wildlife on our trip here: Deer, Bison, Prairie Dogs, and Bighorn Sheep! Never thought I would ever be so close to these animals. The landscape is just so interesting and rugged - it is no wonder why it is called the badlands! We arrived at this park first thing in the morning, so the sun was still low which made for great landscape pictures :)

After the Badlands, we headed over towards Custer State Park, Mount Rushmore, and Crazy Horse Memorial. Driving through the National Forest was just amazing. Out West, they were at peak fall color before Wisconsin was. Everything was yellow, and it was easy to depict how many of the trees in the forest were actually coniferous trees vs deciduous. So many hills and curves - the drive was so beautiful! We also learned that Crazy Horse Memorial is still being worked on today! So cool. Custer State Park was pretty awesome too. Where donkeys come up to you and beg for food, bison roam free, and driving Needles Highway was a gem! We never thought we would have had to drive through two tunnels that were max 8ft and 10ft tall! Such a cool experience.

Mount Rushmore:

Crazy Horse Memorial:

Custer State Park:

Next on our list was Devils Tower in Wyoming! This was an interesting monument to see. You could see the tower from miles away, and it was just ginormous walking next to it! There happened to be two people climbing the tower as we were there. They were about halfway up when we had left! A long time ago, two ranchers made a ladder with pegs to climb the tower, and their ladder still remains at the side of the tower today! It is hard to spot, but it is there :)

After Devils Tower, we were on our way to West Yellowstone! Yellowstone is one of the top National Parks people visit. It gets a lot of hype. It was very beautiful, but still not the top spot of our trip! ( I'll get to that at the end ;) ) At Yellowstone, we saw: Bison (walking in front and beside our car!), Old Faithful, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, Hot Springs, and Geysers (which smelt horrible). Goodness the geysers smelt so bad.

Our last stop was Grand Teton National Park! We stayed in Jackson Hole, WY. By far my favorite spot of our trip. I was so excited to see mountains! It is a smaller national park, but it is highly recommended and worth a visit! My favorite area within the park was Jenny Lake. I'd definitely return there someday, even to kayak! So serene and beautiful! We now know where Ice Mountain water got their logo idea from, hehe ;)

Our travels went very well. Aaron's favorite spot was Custer State Park. My favorite spot was Grand Teton National Park. Our ride back home was the longest due to not making any stops along the way. As wonderful as our trip was, I cannot tell you how happy I was to see a corn field again! We both made it home safely and are happy to be able to tell stories and show pictures of our ventures!