App shows potential camping sites planned in advance for camping with the van.
Campsite planning app offers new clues in case of missing woman Gabby Petito
Gabby Petito travels from Moab to Jackson
Petito and Laundrie’s moved through northern Utah in late August, on their way to national parks of Wyoming.
On The Dyrt app, Gabby Petito had marked potential camping sites in Utah’s Skull Valley. Petito’s list in the app titled “craters to Teton” suggests she and Laundrie might have visited or planned to visit
Craters of the Moon National Monument in southeastern Idaho after leaving Utah.
Items in that list show Petito and Laundrie might also have driven to Palisades Reservoir along the Snake River before entering into southwestern Wyoming en route to
Grand Teton National Park. Petito had eyed potential camping spots east of the park, in locations that would afford scenic views of the park’s iconic peaks.
Petito’s last communications with family members are believed to have occurred in this vicinity. She reportedly told her family she was headed from Teton area to
Yellowstone National Park shortly before she disappeared.
The Grassy Lake Road site
Gabby Petito’s list on The Dyrt for “near Yellowstone” includes a location in between Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks, in the
John D. Rockefeller Memorial Parkway. The location sits in a meadow along Glade Creek a little over two miles southeast of Grassy Lake Reservoir.
There are many other primitive camping locations along the unpaved Grassy Lake Road, as well as spur roads leading to remote backcountry destinations in the Targhee National Forest and southwestern corner of Yellowstone National Park.
The next site to the north on Petito’s “near Yellowstone” list is a backcountry campsite, labeled 4R1, within the heart of Yellowstone National Park. Unlike many of the locations Petito had marked on the app, the 4R1 site was not a place where she and Laundrie could have camped out of their van.
Instead, Yellowstone’s 4R1 requires a short hike in from the Canyon Village area of the park. 4R1 sits on Ribbon Lake, near the south rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. An overnight stay at 4R1 would have required Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie to obtain a permit from the National Park Service. The COLD team cannot confirm whether or not the couple obtained such a permit or hiked in to Ribbon Lake.
Petito’s lists on The Dyrt suggest she’d expected to exit Yellowstone National Park via the park’s west entrance. Her next place mark was the Targhee Creek Trailhead along U.S. Highway 20 east of Henry’s Lake State Park in Idaho.
