This post is the first in a series about a girls’ trip I took for seven days driving from Denver, Colorado to Yellowstone National Park, to Grand Teton National Park.

For the last three years in a row, a good friend of mine, Tina, and I have gone on a girls’ trip. On the first, I flew out to visit her where she was living at the time, in Arizona, and we hiked down the Grand Canyon to Havasupai Falls.

And last year, another friend of ours joined us and we went to The Bahamas.

Maybe one of these days, I’ll post some throwback posts about those trips.

This trip has been one of my favorites, year after year, because I can ease off of my responsibilities as a mother and wife (well, before the elopement, as a girlfriend) and just have a blast with the downest, most laid-back chick that I’ve been lucky enough to know for the last 13+ years.

This year, the destination was Yellowstone National Park. I hadn’t explored that side of the country, and we found that flights to Denver were significantly cheaper (because it’s a hub) so we decided we’d turn this year’s trip into another flight/road trip hybrid.

While we were in the later planning stages, I called up a mutual friend of ours, Spencer, who lives in Denver. Neither of us had seen in a decade but I figured, “Why not?”

Spencer was thrilled to hear from us, and being quite the outdoorsman, he had tons of suggestions for gear and things to do. After some back and forth, he suggested, “How about you just give me a call when you arrive and I’ll take care of everything from there?” Sold.

We packed our bags…

…and took the earliest flight out of Houston. Continue reading →