Arches

Hit some rain on crazy wind on the way back from a hike, had to book out of there!

Rocky Mountain

A trip at Rocky Mountain National Park, interrupted by rain (a theme on our trip).  Planned on staying for a few days but got rained on and raced to Arches instead.  Super busy park and camping was really hard to come by, we lucked out just as a few folks canceled their site.  The online booking system is a free for all.

Beautiful flowers abound in the alpine environment (and lots of elk)

This is at 12005 ft of elevation! 

Managed to get a little bit of the milky way in there at about 2am.  Being by awful camping neighbors is becoming a common theme.  (Leaving a crazy amount of lights on, super loud kids, and just overall annoying yuppies) 

Got up super early to snag some parking and do the Emerald Lake Hike

Mammoth Cave - so difficult to photo

The "strenuous" hike was cake, but we got to see some really neat things.  Really hard to photograph.  Kentucky is really hot and muggy in the summer!

All the way to Badlands

One heck of a drive to get there.

Grand Tetons

 Thunderstorms threatened.  Glad we got out of there when we did, it sure rained on us hard on the way out.

 Really cool drive up a mountain, but some seriously wicked mosquitos. 

Wish it wasn't so cloudy - storms were rolling in

Yellowstone

Lots of construction - really difficult to pick a hike here, but we found a short decent one.  Weather wasn't great so we kinda had to bust through there.

Passing through Glacier

Thought the road to the sun hwy was open, it was not.  Snagged this picture and left!

Painted Hills Oregon

One of the first things we did on my sabbatical was go to the Painted Hills in Oregon, it was a beautiful day, difficult to capture as this was in the middle of the day