Leavenworth is a charming little town in Chelan County, Washington. What makes this city special you wonder? Well, the entire town center is modelled on a Bavarian village. They even have a nutcracker Museum. While we were visiting, the town was celebrating Oktoberfest. The funny thing is that it’s actually claimed to be one of the most attended in the world outside Munich, Germany. Not sure if that’s true though so don’t quote me on it.

I know it sounds cheesy, but we actually quite liked it. We’ll definitely be back, we really need to try some schnitzel:). That specific evening we enjoyed pretzels and cheese fondue at Uncle Uli’s Pub (a cozy pub, and dog friendly on-their deck).

Uncle Uli’s Cheese Fondue

Pretzel

A little over a 1000 kilometers later we arrived in Yellowstone. Our goal was to get there as soon as possible so we could spend the maximum amount of time in the park.

This blog post will show some scenery pictures, the following post (in the next few days) will be about the wildlife we encountered.

In the previous post we mentioned we stayed in the Mammoth Hot Springs area of the park: below a picture of the cabins we stayed at.

Mammoth Hot Springs Cabin (photo credit stpaulsgirl’s)

Grizzly, thinking the shower is the most appropriate place to sleep

Bull Elk outside the restaurant

It was the first time we entered the park through the North Entrance, the Roosevelt Arch (Gardiner).

Try reading the inscription on the top of the arch: “For the Benefit and Enjoyment of the People”. This is a quote from the Organic Act. The act is the legislation which created Yellowstone. For those who didn’t know, Yellowstone was the first national park in the world.

Roosevelt Arch

Yellowstone River

On our way to Cody

Soda Butte in the Lamar Valley

One of the things we did was an off road drive on the Blacktail Deer Plateau. Not ideal with a regular compact car, but it was gorgeous!

Blacktail Deer Plateau

Blacktail Deer Plateau Drive

Along the road we noticed a lot of signs mentioning that trails were closed. Remember the story about the Grizzly bear attack in August? This is the trail where it happened. (Just so you know the rate of dangerous encounters in the park is extremely low).

Mary Mountain Trail

Halfway between Equator and North Pole, who would have thought?

45t Parallel

These are taken in one of our favorite places in the park: West Thumb

Sunrise in Hayden Valley

9. Swiftcurrent lake, Glacier N.P.

8. Berkeley Pit, Butte

7. Venice, Las Vegas

6. Vancouver Panorama

5. Hot spring, Yellowstone N.P.

4. Peyto Lake Panorama

3. Victoria Government Parliament building

2. Dead Tree in Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone N.P.

1. The Wave, Arizona

Berkeley Pit, Butte, Montana | Location on map

The water contains so much dissolved metal that nowadays they actually mine the water as you can see on the picture below.

Berkeley Pit Water Processing Factory | Location on map

Check the map location to get a feeling of how large the pit really is.

PS: If you’re in Butte, go to the Derby Steak House. The steaks they serve are just amazing. Must have been the best steak I ate in my life.

Swiftcurrent Lake, Glacier N.P. | Location on map

Red Eagle Mountain, Glacier N.P. | Location on map

I’m sorry for the slow pace of updates recently on the blog, but our lives seem to get rather hectic nowadays as we are in the final stretch of moving to Vancouver, Canada. My employer in Vancouver booked our plane tickets last week and our packing dates are confirmed so we can actually start counting down and hope we’ve got everything covered here in Belgium. I’m really happy that everything in Vancouver gets arranged by my employer so we don’t have to worry too much about that.