On advice from Cheesecake Factory guy (whose name we very sadly didn’t catch), we took a slightly longer route to our Yellowstone home base (Island Park)… and it was so, so worth it.

Today was hands down our favourite day of driving so far. Only an hour out of Salt Lake City, we exited the highway towards Brigham City on our way to Logan. We’d been promised granite-faced mountains along the way, and we were NOT disappointed.

It was such a huge and refreshing change from the Nevada desert we’d come to expect (which was beautiful in its own way). We found ourselves in a valley of sorts with stunning turn after stunning turn, and a bubbling brook following along at the side of the road.

After a quick stop in Logan, we headed on towards Garden City, which is on the shore of Bear Lake. An hour or so later, we crested a mountain and found the view below.

We really hope you can click on the image for a larger view of the panorama shot (if not, there’s a smaller version in the photo gallery) but honestly, no photo we took could do the lake justice. It is turquoise blue, apparently because of the limestone suspended in the water – think the Caribbean, only in lake form. Simply amazing. We had the pleasure of winding down the mountainside with that view and then travelling along it for another half hour or so.

From there, we headed up to Jackson, Wyoming, and then along twisting mountain roads through several state forests to Island Park, our home for the next few days.

We had originally planned on making this drive in 6 hours, straight down the highway. We’re so, so glad we happened to get lucky with that waiter last night!

Next post will be from the Yellowstone area, so stay tuned!