If you don’t want to see lots of gorgeous pictures, you should stop reading right now!

Some may wonder why we decided to honeymoon out west, when we could have went to an island somewhere. My question is well why not go out west? Have you been out there? If you have then I’m sure you know why we chose to do so. I mean it’s like another country out there & well Seth & I wanted an adventure.

An adventure we got! Most of you know that Seth & I would like to move to Montana in a few years when he has retired from the racing scene. So it seemed like a good time as any to go out there and see the place we would like to call home someday.

It was a little over a year ago this month that we set out to the west, I kept a journal to chronicle our adventures. I would have hated to forget any details no matter how small.

Of course we live in NC and have been to the mountains many times, I kept anticipating seeing the mountains in Bozeman. Seth said you will know when you see them the ground goes from flat to these rising peaks coming out of the ground. I’m sorry Blue Ridge Mountains, but you have nothing on the Rockies! We started out by landing in Bozeman, MT (love this town & their airport was exceptional!)

On our first day alone we saw bison, elk, coyotes, pronghorn and eagles.

We started by exploring Bozeman and the next day we set out for Yellowstone..

Grizzly Country.. Yikes (trust me we bought the $50 bear spray)

Quake Lake (An earthquake turned this valley into a Lake, hence the tree tops)

Mountain Goat Alert… Can you find it??

Welcome to Yellowstone.. “For the benefit and enjoyment of the people”

Mammoth Springs… Unreal

Hey Bear Hey…..

Lamar Valley is the Serengeti of the west.. this is where you come to see wildlife…

My husband glassing the countryside..

Steamboat.. Did you know this actually went off this year??! Crazy

Rainbows in the park..

After this leg of the trip we went through Idaho into the Tetons (which you’ll get to see in Part 2) However, after we spent a few days in the Tetons we came back up through Yellowstone. The South entrance had been closed all week due to snow.. What snow in May right? Oh how we had no idea. Please continue to see how much snow the snow plows had to plow through.

Made it to the Mud Pots & the Great Primsmatic (unfortunately couldn’t see much of it.) By this time I had taken over 3,000 photos I was getting a little photoed out.

The one and only Old Faithful…