A YELLOWSTONE (and Grand Teton) VACATION EXPERIENCE
August 2025
What a wonderful vacation experience!
Yellowstone and the Grand Teton. Truly an experience of a lifetime.
The work of creation. Creation at work.
To experience the grandeur of Yellowstone, to see the bison roam and the geysers erupt, to smell the sulfur of the other thermal features, to actually see the Milky Way in the clear dark sky, to be awed by the majestic Grand Tetons; how amazing!
And to do all of this accompanying Grealdina, the grandkids (Berto and Mirabelle), Rembe and Dana, and Jeff and Dorothy, was truly exceptional.
Call it what you will – God, nature, creation, whatever – it is an experience worth taking in. It is truly a trip of a lifetime.
Creation is indeed a wonderful thing. And to think that we humans are so screwing it up! To think that we humans disrupt and destroy the national world to accommodate our ever growing appetite for comfort, consumption, and capital. Sad.
Maybe it’d be different if experiencing and appreciating creation in its rawest form became an individual and collective experience of every fourth, eighth and twelfth grader. Maybe we could do an exchange student program where kids from the cities go to the vastness that is the wild and vice versa, kids from rural areas go experience the excitement that is urban areas.
Maybe then we would better understand how interconnected it all is. Maybe then we could appreciate the personal choices of living where you feel most comfortable. Maybe then we would strive to take better care of creation.
Maybe.
Upon my return from vacation, sitting on my front porch listening to at least four different birds, being bitten by seemingly invisible bugs, and hearing the air conditioning unit and an airplane in the background brings it all together. It is not either or. It can be both and.
We just have to realize that it ain’t about us. Nature will do just fine if humanity disappears tomorrow. We are dispensable. The opposite is not true. Nature is indispensable. Humanity cannot exist without a healthy natural Earth. We damn well better take care of it if we want to be around to enjoy it, wisely rip the benefit of its resources and coexist.
Indeed, nature was humankind’s first Holy Book. Meditating during a sunrise or sunset, listening to the sweet sounds of a lazy stream, feeling the wind along with the trees; these were our ancestors’ ways of communing with the Almighty. And these remain practices that rival – rather, complement – the rituals of most major faiths today.
I am admittingly a johnny-come lately to the issue of environmental awareness. (Even though by necessity I have practiced recycling and reuse since early childhood, selling bottles for pennies at the corner grocery store so I could buy baseball cards, using plenty of hand-me-down clothing, and having a large collection of reusable containers in the basement). Yet now in my old age I see the immense value of the need to – as Pope Francis put it – take care of our common home.
So the moments, memories and experience of Yellowstone and Grand Teton are etched in me for the rest of my life. I will forever remember the vastness of the land, beauty of the mountains, the colors of the bubbling hot sprigs. I will forever remember the expression on the children’s eyes and their imaginative observations, Berto’s ‘scientific’ explanations and Mirabelle’s thousand ways to get her way 🙂
A big GRACIAS goes to Rembe, Dana, Dorothy and Jeff for doing all the research to make the experience so enjoyable, with a flawless itinerary. It all went so smoothly – thanks to their relentless attention to details; i.e.: when is the best time to be at a certain place to avoid large crowds, how to observe the wildlife, and which cabins to stay at. The kids never asked for their tablet, we had only intermittent internet access, and no television – never missed these things. It all went without a hitch – except Geraldina’s ankle, my thumb, and Mirabelle’s splinter 🙂 The local beer was also pretty good.
Create on!
Reemberto Rodriguez
August 24, 2025
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DAY 1 – Getting there
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DAY 2 – Yellowstone: Undine Falls, Roaming Bisons, Yellowstone River Overlook, Roosevelt Inn, Cowboy Cookout.
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DAY 3 – Lake Lodge Cabins (Yellowstone Lake), Artists Point, Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Mud Volcano Area, Lake Yellowstone.
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DAY 04 – Sunrise at Lake Lodge Cabin, Moulton Reenactments, Transfiguration Chapel, River Raft Experience.
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DAY 05 – Grand Teton Sunrise, Jenny Lake, Inspiration Point, Jackson Hole, Piste Mountain Lift.
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DAY 06 – Colter Bay, Catholic Chapel, Idaho, Old Faithful, Old Faithful Inn.
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DAY 07 – Excelsior Crater, Grand Prismatic, More Yellowstone Geysers.
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DAY 08 – Norris Geyser Basin, Mammoth Hot Springs, Gibbon Falls, Christmas at the Inn.
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V I D E O . C O M P I L A T I O N S
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