It’s that time of the year when we start planning our summer camping trips. We are a little more than an hour from the gates of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks but we’ve never actually camped inside the borders of the parks themselves and I don’t think we ever will.

Why?

Well, last July was the busiest month in the history of the park with over a million visitors (!). The thought of packing in like sardines with so many people into the crowded campgrounds just doesn’t appeal to us at all. It feels so unnatural to camp like that!

With millions of acres of wilderness in every direction here, we prefer to find places where there are less people, not more…

With everything going on in the economy, I’m not sure that quite as many folks will be heading our direction this summer but even if the campgrounds were empty we’d still prefer to stay on the periphery of the parks mostly because we usually bring a handful of our sled dogs with us and we love to find new trails to run them on with the buggy.

That’s something we can’t do inside the parks.

I’m sure we’ll drive up through Yellowstone and Grand Teton again this year, we usually go at least once but like with most people who live near large tourist areas, it’s not really a big deal if we don’t. We’re happy to hang out where the locals go.

Or in our case, where hardly anyone goes.

Just us and nature suits me just fine. 🙂