Yellowstone

So - we bought sunscreen, only to not see the sun for the rest of our vacation - Monday we headed in to Yellowstone, we went back to the store and bought an umbrella but only used it a couple of times. It sprinkled on and off, but over all it was just cloudy - which made for some really pretty pictures. Jenny's lake - the water was really high - we had to go down a little, fairly steep hill and of course Grace stepped right in the water. Max through rocks - of course.

I kept telling Grace she would see all kinds of animals - but we hadn't seen anything all morning. Then there were about 50 cars pulled over so we stopped. Some people told us there was a bull moose down in the meadow - which was a really steep downward climb. It was nerve wracking and everything my mother ever told me about moose I threw out the window. I took my kids down to the meadow to see the moose- Well he was still on the far side of the meadow - but we didn't stay long!

Then we headed on to Old Faithful. Mike said he's never seen it - we were driving up and saw it go off, so we had an hour and 20 minutes before it went off again. We ate in the lodge, visited the gift shop and stopped for ice cream. Then we headed outside to see natures amazing beauty -

Instead I saw what a mess two little kids could make with ice cream cones, they were laughing, Max was covered from head to toe, Grace rubbed it on her face after she saw him and I was a complete, sticky mess.

Mike wasn't so so thrilled at this point.

There were hundreds and hundreds of people there, and I'll admit my thought was I want to hurry to the car so we aren't stuck in the parking lot while everyone is trying to leave! (Yes, I'm my fathers child.) We started walking away before it was all the way finished, I still had to make a stop in the restroom to clean up ice cream.

On our way out of the park we stopped at a little walk way and saw some of the small hot pots. This ended up being our favorite part, the kids enjoyed it, they laughed and picked their favorites. I became my mom, "stay on the walk way" "don't lean over" "don't run"....I loved my family vacation memories!

This one was called Mustard Pool - when we got to it you could hear water, but not see it. A couple told us to wait a few minutes and sure enough the water started blowing, whistling and then came shooting out of the ground. These things just amaze me!

So we saw one animal, and some hot pots. Mike and I want to go again without the kids so we can see more - but they were done and by this time it was late afternoon. We hit an awesome storm in West Yellowstone and had a scary drive into Idaho Falls. Thankfully the hotel's pool was open 24 hours, and we let the kids swim until after 10pm.

Just a shameless plug - if you are ever in IF and need lodging we stayed at the Best Western Cottontree and it was really nice. The rooms were nice, the pool was nice, the breakfast was awesome and the staff was great.