The Badlands + Yellowstone Adventure

So excited to FINALLY share this trip!! I’ve been wanting to start blogging for quite some time now, so I figured I would start at the part where Zach and I made things official 🙂 That’s right! Zach proposed a little over 2 years ago in May while we were vacationing in Yellowstone. It was an epic adventure so I’m excited for you to check it out!

This vacation was a road trip and we started it off in the Badlands. I think the Badlands if highly underrated. It was super cool and the buffalo were my favorite part! Although they were quite terrifying. They were literally wandering into our campsites and didn’t care ONE BIT that us and some other campers were there. Zach and I were cooking dinner when one was literally feet away from me. So I took shelter behind the only thing there…a picnic table. Luckily I survived! Ha! But seriously though, you don’t mess around with those guys or it may be the last thing you ever do!

And of course all that hiking in the sun left us a little sun burnt if you can’t tell! We got some wicked tan lines! This smoochy photo was taken at the free campsite in the Badlands where the buffalo were roaming all around us!

Naturally, we had to stop at Mount Rushmore and see Crazy Horse. I don’t know why Zach and I both thought this, but everywhere you see all these completed pictures of the Crazy Horse monument, so we thought it was all done. Then when we actually paid to get in and got out to look we realized that they have a WAYS to go! It was still pretty neat to see though.

One of the coolest things was the geysers at Yellowstone!!! It was the bubbling, the steam and the gorgeous teal color of them that made me like them so much! When people describe the smell of sulfur, they are spot on when they say it smells like rotten eggs. Literally the whole time we were there, it smelled like that. But you totally get past that because it’s all SO COOL! And also kind of terrifying because you can seriously injure yourself or get killed if you fall in…so we were extra cautious! But aside from being scared to fall in, you can see how I was so excited, I kept pointing and telling Zach to look at everything I thought was super cool or beautiful!

You’ll also notice that during this trip, I’m taking photos with my iPhone! That’s because I had just begun to pick up photography. Obviously, the signs where there that I wanted to have a camera in my hands to capture everything I saw. I did take some of the photos though! But I give Zach most of the photo credit for this trip 🙂

What you can’t see in the photos is that the majority of the time Zach and I did not shower! That’s because it was earlier enough in the year that there were limited campsites open. So we got a pretty basic campsite with just a toilet, a sink to share with the other campers and a water spigot at our campsite. Sooooo no showers! It wasn’t until we explored further into Yellowstone that we discovered a place to pay to shower! I remember taking the longest, steamiest shower. I love camping, but I think it’s time to admit that I AM more of a glamper. I don’t mind roughin’ it and getting dirty, but I like to end the day with a hot shower! Just sayin.

I bet you’re wondering when I get to the part where I get ENGAGED!!! Zach actually videod the proposal and still to this day he hasn’t showed it to anyone! He is very outgoing, but it meant a lot to him to make the proposal a very intimate and private moment.

It was a few days into the trip and we were hiking near the Yellowstone river. We had just seen the black bear and had stopped for our lunches to look at the awesome view. Zach was fiddling with getting his camera to stick on a tree so that he could “take a picture of us” so I patiently waited until he got it all set up. Little did I know that he had actually pressed record for video instead of the photo I thought he was taking. I did notice that the red light was on though so I asked him if it was supposed to be like that. I thought it was weird! He said it was supposed to, and I didn’t know anything about setting up timed photos so I didn’t think anything of it!

We posed for the picture but afterwards he got down on one knee and said, “Do you know how much I love you?” It was then, that I realized after a brief 6 month dating history in Junior High and 5 years of dating, that we were FINALLY engaged!! And it was totally us to get engaged while we were hiking and exploring the world. We spent the rest of the hike with huge smiles plastered to our faces. It was a hike and a trip worth remembering forever!

It was crazy because once we went deeper into the park and up the mountain, it started to snow! It was super slushy and we had a lot of fun playing in the snow and taking fun pictures! Aaaand you’ll see me taking more photos with my phone, BUTT (pun intended) I did take a nice photo of my hubby’s behind. It’s probably my favorite, but I’m biased!

You’ll see we met a lot of woodland creatures along the way. Including a black bear! The bear seemed to actually be quite annoyed with all the onlookers since I’m pretty sure he just wanted to cross the road to the other side! EVERYONE and their brother was there photographing it! Poor little guy!