The Honeymoon

Well its official... Amanda is a Beckstead and I couldn't be happier. Its the new awesome! The wedding was great. We were married in the Logan Utah Temple on June 7th 2007 around 12:00 in the afternoon. I loved being able to look into Amanda's eyes as we were married for time and all eternity. I've never experienced anything like it. After the deed was done, we went outside and had our pictures taken with the family and photos of just the two of us. Our photographer Kellee was a dream to work with and we would recommend her to anyone and everyone. We don't have our photos just yet, but when we do then we are going to make sure and post our favorites here on our blog.

After our wedding, we had a luncheon at The Iron Gate Grill. It was fun to be surrounded by friends and family who have been there for us every step of the way. It was an emotional experience to say the least. We had a lot of people there from out of state as well. Alex and Heather flew in from San Francisco. Alex actually flew back to California that night and flew back to Utah the next afternoon for our reception and then flew back to California for good. My good friend Danial Atkins flew in from Chicago. Other people came from St. George Utah, from Idaho, and Colorado. We loved it.

Amanda and I spent that night at the luxurious Little America Hotel in Salt Lake City.

The hotel was good to us. When we were checking in, the girl at the counter said "You two look happy... Is it your honeymoon?" we said "Yes." and she gave us a complimentary upgrade to a bigger better room! Can you say, cha ching! That night was our reception at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building in down town Salt Lake. We were in the Wasatch Room over looking the east valley. It was beautiful. Some of the highlights of the night are when Amanda's baby brother KC was drinking the water out of the fountain, Amanda smashing the cake in my face and running away and seeing our family and friends.

(This is Amanda's mom Julia helping her get ready for the reception.)

(This is the bouquet that Amanda had. Isn't it awesome?!)

The reception was good and our friends and family were generous. So after a restful nights sleep at the hotel, we set out for beautiful Jackson Hole Wyoming. The trip was a lot of fun. We made a thousand stops along the way for various reasons.The first stop that we made was in Almy. The writing is hard to read in the picture, but it talks about a mine explosion that happened during the late 1800's early 1900's. It was the 3rd largest explosion in Wyoming history. According to my dad we had family in that mine when it exploded and we had family who had just walked out of the mine when it exploded.

I eventually grew tired of driving and took my life in my hands. I let Amanda drive.
After a short gas up and leg stretch in Cokeville, we were on our way again. But before long we stopped in Geneva Idaho. That's the town were Amanda's dad grew up. We took some pictures of the house that her Dad grew up in. No one lives there now, but Amanda's Aunt and Uncle live next door.

This is the house...

This is the land Amanda's parents inherited...And this is a present from Amanda's Aunt and Uncle's cat...It was fun to see where Victor grew up.

From there we continued north and made sure to stop in all of the small towns and take a picture. We stopped at a couple other sights as well.

We eventually came to Star Valley where the town of Afton is located. It looked like Afton was proud of 3 things. 1) Afton is home of the worlds largest Elk Antler Arch. 2) Afton is home to the Olympic wrestler Rulon Gardner. 3) Afton now has a Taco Time.

This is the Elk Antler Arch I was talking about. The Taco Time was about 1/2 mile up this street and there were signs everywhere proclaiming their love for the big R.G. (More commonly known as Rulon Gardner.)

We continued to stop at all of the small towns along the way.

About 45 minutes out of Jackson hole we stopped to take a picture of the Snake River. Little did we know, we would be rafting on the river past that very spot the next day.

Welcome to Jackson!!! (Finally)

And Welcome to our cabin. We stayed in a private cabin at the Elk Country Inn.

We were only two block from the down town area. There was a lot of cool things to see there. The had shoot out, and everything. One of the local theaters was promoting their production of Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, and there was another theater company that sent people out to sing old time tunes to attract patrons as well. That first night we ate dinner at a restaurant called Trio an American Bistro. I had a Bison Burger and sweet potato fries. It was delish!

And Downtown was fun.This Elk Antler Arch is in downtown Jackson. According to our river guide a local Best Western had recently bought one the four arches at the park for 50 thousand dollars. I guess no one told them you can pick up antlers for free.

The next day Amanda and I went on a white water rafting trip. We booked our trip with Jackson Hole White Water. The whitewater trip was a definite highpoint for us. While we were floating along, we got to see an immature Bald Eagle land right in front of our boat and then fly away. That was pretty cool. Amanda and I went swimming on the trip too. (Don't worry it was on purpose.) There was a cute old couple there who took our pictures while we were in the water and sent them to us. I'll scan them and put them on the blog eventually.

This is us getting ready to go on our rafting trip.

Amanda and I went to the Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum. It wasn't worth the money, and we don't believe it.

The sign said that it was for the man who had everything and that it only cost $20, but Amanda still said no.

The day after we went white water rafting we went to Dornans Pizza and Pasta. They had great food and fun atmosphere. But I think that our favorite part was the view from where we ate. We ate on the roof of the restaurant, and had an unobstructed view of the Tetons. We wanted to make it in time for the sunset, but I think that we were a little early. But here are the photos of what we saw.

The next day we checked out Yellowstone National Park. I hadn't been to Jackson or to Yellowstone since I was about 7 and Amanda hadn't been since she was about 13. So we had a lot of ground to cover, and cover ground we did. Yellowstone's South entrance is about an hours drive from Jackson. Then once in the park, we drove another 123 miles. Needless to say, we saw a good portion of the park.

We stopped and saw some of the sights on the way in...

We saw some wildlife...

We saw Old Faithful and the surrounding area...


This Bison was hanging out about 50 feet from the 300+ people that were waiting for Old Faithful to erupt.

A little ways up the road we came across another Elk. He still had the velvet on his antlers and everything. It was awesome!

After the elk there was a cool waterfall...

Then we saw our rarest sight, a coyote. He was just off the road, and everybody else had stopped to see the bison on the oposite side of the road.

From here we went on to see a beautiful waterfall that was a little way of the primary road. There weren't nearly as many people here, and I'm glad that we decided to take the time to see it. It was beatiful.

I would have to say that the highlight of the park itself was the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It was huge and the waterfall was incredible. The canyon walls are active geysers. Not that kind that spurt hundreds of feet in the air, but the kind that bubble and drip. Because of that, the canyon walls erode very quickly and change a lot every year. We also saw a large Osprey nest from one of the over looks.

Yellowstone lake was cool...

Yellowstone had a lot to see. We could have spent another 3 days in the park and still not see all of the cool stuff. But we feel like we saw a lot of the things worth seeing. The next day we went to Teton National Park. This park didn't have as much to see but it had a lot more hiking, camping and backpacking available. Amanda and I kept saying that we want to go back to the Tetons for a camping/backpacking trip. But there were some incredible views of the mountains throughout the park.

After the park we went to the Teton Village where they have a huge ski resort. During the summer the have a gondola you can take to the top of the resort and get the views from the top of the teton Range. It was incredible.

That night we ate dinner at the Bar J Ranch and watched the Bar J Wranglers. This was the highlight of my entire trip. The Bar J Wranglers were a riot, the food was great, and the music was a lot of fun.

That was our final night. We had a ball in Jackson hole, and it was hard to say goodbye and go home to Logan. Jackson was so much fun, the parks were beautiful and it was a great overall trip.

So we said our goodbyes to Jackson and headed home...
Our final stop on our way home was at the Bear Lake over look.

Thats it for the honeymoon. When Amanda and I cam home we were expecting to find our brand new bedroom set that we ordered 3 weeks before we got married. But instead all we found was a mattress and a box springs. Needless to say we were a little upset. It only took a week to get the rest of our bedroom set.

Now Amanda and I are workig for the summer and trying to prepare for the upcoming semester. I'm taking an Arts Symposium class as well. We are grateful that we were able to go on a honeymoon and celebrate our marriage. Now its back to the grind stone and the starting of our eternal journey together.