Out West 2022 (Part 1 – Grand Teton National Park)

This is going to be a multi-post trip report for our 2022 summer vacation. We tackled some bucket list items including Yellowstone National Park, Grand Teton National Park, and the tour at Minuteman Missile National Historic Site. We hope you enjoy following along through our biggest RV trip yet.

June 24-26, 2022 – Home to Dubois, Wyoming

Our first significant destination was Grand Teton National Park. We broke up that distance into three days.

June 24, 2022

Our daughter had a swim meet on the 24th, so we had Maddie Montana all packed up the night before and we left as soon as she was done around noon. The first stop of the trip was Lafayette Park in Gothenburg, NE. It’s a cute city park with a campground. It was peaceful despite some weather that blew through overnight.

June 25, 2022

The next day was a lot of flat driving across I-80 in Nebraska. The mountains of Wyoming started to come into view in the mid-afternoon. We arrived to Medicine Bow National Forest just east of Laramie, Wyoming at 3 pm. The area is really great with plenty of room to spread out.

In the evening, we met up with some old friends for dinner in Laramie. It was great to catch up since we really don’t get to see each other too often. After dinner, we got back to camp and enjoyed a quiet evening. Unfortunately a front blew in and it was windy and got quite cool. I set the heater at 55 degrees and issued extra blankets for everyone.

June 26, 2022

The thermometer in the camper read 56 degrees inside and 44 degrees outside. We turned the furnace up to take the edge off the cold as breakfast was coming together. Everyone got packed up and we hitched up Maddie and got on the road just after 9 am.

The drive from Laramie to Dubois was interesting. Lots of nice views of changing elevation as we traversed mountain ranges, but also some flat desert. Our destination for the night was the Dubois KOA. We planned to get to the campground early so we could swim in the pool and unwind from 3 long days on the road. Unfortunately, the pool was under repair. A bit frustrating that the campground neglected to disclose that since it’d been broken for several months at that point, but we made lemonade with what we had.

The kids fished in the stream behind the campground, we played cornhole as a family, the kids tossed the football around, and we enjoyed a relaxing afternoon and evening in the camper.

June 27, 2022 – Dubois, Wyoming to Grand Teton National Park

Our journey resumed around 9 am. The drive from Dubois to Grand Teton is spectacular. So many snow capped mountains and changing elevation. We were so excited as Grand Teton National Park got close. Our arrival to the park was too early to check-in at our campground, so we stopped at the Upper Willow Flats Overlook to take in some amazing views and to make lunch.

Our check-in time arrived and we drove the rest of the way to Colter Bay RV Park on the north end of Grand Teton National Park. We got settled at our campsite and decided to set out for a hike at Two Oceans Lake.

The hike was nice, but the trail was a bit overgrown. We got out about 3/4 mile into it and we decided to turn around and head back. The view where we turned around was worth the walk though.

Back at the campsite we enjoyed a nice dinner and we did some fishing in Jackson Lake. The fish weren’t really biting, but we caught one.

That’s a good spot to wrap it up for this post. We’ll pick it up next time with the rest of our time at Grand Teton National Park.