It’s always great when the things we expect to be awful turn out to be extraordinary. Last summer, when I learned I was going to Yellowstone national park, I was infuriated. To me that seemed like a waste of a vacation. I thought that all we would do is walk through some trees and go on a picnic. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Yellowstone national park is a wonderful place to relax and enjoy nature at its best. You will never see the same thing twice while you’re their. You also never know what to expect. Wildlife is everywhere and you would have to be blind to miss it. We spent our whole trip scanning the woods for just one glimpse of a bear. On the last day we not only saw one bear, but a whole bear family running through a field (from the safety of our car, of course). To me, that felt like the experience of a lifetime.

Yellowstone has all kinds of great hiking trails that are fun to take. Some trails are safer then others, however. My dad and I went passed a sign that warned us about the abundance of bears in the area. I thought that that was fun and exciting because at the time I had never seen a wild bear. Now that I look back on it, I am extremely glad that I did not have a close encounter with a bear.

We went white water rafting for a whole day which was also amazing! Rafting isn’t allowed in the park so we had to drive a ways to get to the rafting company that took us on our trip. We rafted for a whole day. At lunch time we parked the rafts at the beach-like area and ate. It was a blast. There was even a fun story behind some of the river. Some cowboy got drunk and tried to canoe through the river during a storm when the water was the roughest. He fell out and drowned and they named the section he died in after him.

The only hard part about Yellowstone was meeting new people. It was impossible. If you met someone cool, you would both leave and never see each other again in a matter of hours since there is so much to see in the park that no one is going to see the exact same things.

Horseback riding was offered. However, ours got canceled and we ended up taking a trip to Jackson Hole, which was fun too! The amount of buffalo I saw on the trip was ridiculous! There were hundreds of them, all of which seemed to be friendly towards people.

My trip to Yellowstone was exactly what I needed! A combination of breath taking landscapes and interesting creatures made this trip one of my best ever. I highly recommend going on a vacation like this because it is a completely different experience than what you’re used to. All-in-all I rate this trip an 8.5 out of 10.