You know, scouting for land is a heck of a lot different than searching for a house in an already established neighborhood. It takes a bit more: a dash of adventure, a willingness to get lost, a lot of dirt, rocks, underbrush and ideally, a high-clearance vehicle. Oh and one more thing. It requires loads of patience.

Going into this, we didn’t realize how difficult it would be. After so many days and weeks getting lost, we needed some down-time. Not to mention old Blue isn’t exactly the off-roading vehicle one dreams of when traveling to remote places.

In order for us to keep our sanity, we found that visiting National Parks during the down time was an excellent respite. We made sure to get an annual pass (I think its called Golden Eagle?), which ends up paying for itself with just 2 visits to any National Park in the country in a 12-month period. It is totally worth it!

After exploring Grand Teton National Park we made the short jaunt north. A beautiful, scenic byway with miles of mountain views (and maybe a bear or two) and we arrive at Yellowstone National Park [echo echo echo].

Yellowstone is probably one of the most popular parks in all of the United States. That means, it is almost always packed, especially during summer. Thankfully, its also gigantic, bordering Idaho and Montana, with its bulk contained in Wyoming. Our very first visit to Yellowstone was over 5 years ago; Jake and I accompanied my parental units on an RV road trip. Call it a prequel to living in a confined space.

Yellowstone offers a splendid array of prehistoric landscape features of bubbling geysers, mineral patterns painted in beautiful portraits and heaps of wildlife. And even with the masses of people, we still managed to find places with tons of exploring potential and virtually no people. We also had to visit a few favorites like Old Faithful and The Grand Prismatic Spring.

In the early stages of Operation Land Grab, Yellowstone was situated perfectly in the wake of our first hopeful spot. Directly east is Cody, Wyoming. We don’t have an inclination to live in Cody, however the land is about 35 miles north of there. So, we might as well check out the nearest town to us, should we decide this first bit of land is ours.

The drive out east follows a mountain pass and then moves into the Shoshone National Forest. It was so beautiful with large mountains surrounded by gorgeous pine trees of all varieties and a big river bisecting the valley. This would be perfect! As we drove on, the landscape shifted so vastly you would think we were in another part of the country. Nope, only a short distance and those lush, snowy green mountains descended into dry, barren flats and rocky plateaus scattered amongst desert brush.

Cody is a pretty cute little town. The main street is small and quaint with a few hardware stores, an old-timey theater and some government buildings. There was a park nearby where we sat to try to negotiate the how’s and where’s of this land. Jake decided that we needed to call the realtor for more details, but there was no signal here. So we walked into a cute cafe and grabbed some lunch and managed to get a hold of the realtor. He gave us GPS coordinates and a few more insights on property boundaries.

The property we are looking at is 35 acres and has an adjoining parcel for sale as well. Both are very inexpensive and all we know is that there is a yellow sign on the property line. With our bellies full and directions in hand, we hit the road north from Cody. The drive was pretty, albeit much less green than I was hoping. When we finally neared the destination we were truly out in the middle of nowhere. It was a random turn down an empty, rocky road for a few miles before we found our sign. Poor Blue struggled to maneuver, but thankfully we didn’t have to go THAT far.

We made it. First plot of land. It was very dry, arid, super hot and flat. There was no foliage other than some desert brush and tussock. Its not exactly the vision of pristine mountains and trees that we imagined. But, it is very very cheap (though I’m not surprised why).

35 acres sounds like a lot. And the two parcels we could see side by side, make 70 acres. That is huge! But when you can see for miles and everything is flat with no contrast of terrain or trees, it just seems small. And we could see all of the neighbors and their dilapidated trailers and rubbish piles.

Oh well, so this one isn’t THE ONE. But, it was really exciting that we’ve finally seen the first plot of land. Operation Land Grab is ALIVE!

More Yellowstone

Jake and I have been blessed to visit this park many times throughout our travels, as it tends to be the perfect midway stop between the northwestern and southwestern states on our list. Each visit we experience something new. Generally, we only visit one popular site and then go off into the lesser-explored paths to spend our time. Or, we focus on wildlife watching, which means a lot of sitting around and maneuvering tripods and scopes. Any way that its done, its always beautiful. In all our years, we have not ever seen a bear in the wild, until our last visit, when we spotted five grizzlies!

Yellowstone is truly magical. Of all the National Parks, I believe that it is one of the best and will hold a very special place in our hearts.