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Tag: lower loop

Plateau of Fire: Yellowstone National Park

Tuesday – Saturday, August 19-23, 2025

Up until about a week ago Diane and I were planning to spend the latter part of this week backpacking in the Wind River Range in Wyoming, however some things came up that prevented us from going on a longer backpacking trip at this time, so we decided to change course and throw together a last minute trip to Yellowstone National Park instead. Neither of us had ever been to Yellowstone before and I’ve certainly always avoided the park because of the massive crowds it attracts, but I guess it was finally time to give the world’s first National Park a shot. So late last week I reserved a site at the Bridge Bay Campground for three nights and then came up with a rough itinerary that focused on visiting some of the areas around the lower Grand Loop Road, entering the park via Cody and the East Entrance and then leaving through the South Entrance into Jackson Hole. I had never even thought about planning a trip to Yellowstone before last week or been this far north in Wyoming before, and I had to consult a lot of maps and guidebooks to help me figure out the layout of the park rather quickly so our itinerary would make some sense.

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Lower Palisade Plunge & Palisade Rim Trails

Saturday, January 6, 2024

Well, you could say that 2024 has not started off on the right foot for me! On New Year’s Day I was planning on hiking in the Colorado National Monument to start off the new year right, but when I went to leave early in the morning my Jeep wouldn’t start. I was pretty positive that it wasn’t the battery and could hear that the engine was making a loud knocking sound as it was trying to turn over, so my heart sank as I realized there was most likely something wrong internally to the engine. So much for my first hike of the year! Later in the day when it warmed up a bit outside I made sure the battery was good and that there wasn’t something simple wrong, and then I had my Jeep towed over to the dealership so it could be looked at. Luckily, my Jeep is still just barely covered under the Powertrain Warranty. Anyway, since my Jeep is still waiting to be diagnosed I was stuck at home this weekend, but was able to borrow Diane’s car on Saturday morning so I could at least go on a local hike. I was hoping to get in a hike with some elevation gain as training for a longer upcoming hike later this month, so I decided to give the lower Palisade Plunge Trail a try. The last time I had hiked the nearby Palisade Rim Trail the Plunge Trail didn’t even exist, so this would be all new terrain for me.

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