Announcing Explorers Of The Wild: Wyoming
Lower Yellowstone Falls is even more impressive in person
In a recent post, 2023 - What Exciting Adventures Lie Ahead, we told you about our change of plans for next year. Our original plans had us working our way up through the heart of our country, visiting Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks before working our way through Canada, via Banff and Jasper, before arriving in Alaska.
Instead, we will spend our summer, June through September, in Wyoming, just outside the Northeast entrance to Yellowstone. It truly is a dream come true. The wilds of Wyoming, and specifically Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, are areas that we have always wanted to explore. The region offers us all of the attributes we are constantly searching for mountains, forests, wildlife, remoteness, and solitude. You are probably asking solitude? Yellowstone normally sees over four million visitors annually, and Grand Teton hosts almost three million.
Many people fail to realize that the two famous parks are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) is one of the largest intact ecosystems in the northern temperate zone on Earth and covers over 22 million acres. That’s over 2 million acres larger than the state of South Carolina. While Yellowstone and Grant Teton are the centerpieces, they are surrounded by five national forests (Custer Gallatin National Forest, Beaverhead-Deerlodge National Forest, Caribou-Targhee National Forest, Bridger-Teton National Forest, and Shoshone National Forest) and three other federal areas protected by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (National Elk Refuge, Red Rock Lakes, and Grays Lake National Wildlife Refuge).
Wildlife is one of our favorite aspects of exploring nature and one of the things we look forward to in Yellowstone; black and grizzly bears, buffalo, elk, deer, bighorn sheep, wolves, mountain lions, and more.
That is a whole lot of solitude. National Forests are one of our favorite areas to explore. Most are more accessible than National Parks as their road and trail systems better allow for vehicle-based travel and offer dispersed camping, allowing us to camp alone in our chosen location. Gila National Forest is what made us fall in love with this lifestyle in the first place. Our hypothesis is that these National Forests will offer all of the natural splendors of Yellowstone and Grand Teton without all of the crowds and that we will be better able to access the most remote areas that they have to offer.
With this in mind, we are announcing Exploring The Wild: Wyoming, where we will spend over two months exploring as much of Yellowstone National Park and the surrounding National Forests and Wildernesses to see what they have to offer. While overland vehicle-based travel will be our main method of exploration, we will also explore via foot and kayak as well. This will allow us to explore the most remote areas the GYE offers. Our adventures will be captured in a series of blog posts and through the launch of our new Youtube Channel. Who knows, you may find it in a magazine sometime soon.
We strongly believe that the GYE is an underappreciated option for overland travelers and explorers; this is something that we hope to change. Most of our efforts will be focused outside the park, and due to location will focus mostly on Shoshone, Bridger-Teton, and Custer Gallatin National Forests. As always, we will capture our tracks, points of interest, and campsites, along with detailed trail reports for our favorite trails. Want to go where we go? You will soon be able to.
Follow along as we live out our dreams; maybe you can do the same one day. Stay tuned, as there will soon be more to come.
