Yellowstone National Park

Next on our "To Do List" before leaving Idaho was visiting Yellowstone National Park. It worked out perfectly that Jared's dad and stepmom and her kids were going to be camping out there just a few weeks before our move. It guaranteed that we would make it up there; we didn't want to miss out on spending time with Grandpa Larry and Grandma Carren.

****Just a warning: There will be A LOT of pictures in this post.****

Shortly after arriving at our campsite, while enjoying dinner, we had our first encounter with a buffalo. He walked right through our campsite. It was pretty cool. All the kids were especially excited.

A little later that evening, we had another visitor:

When we were driving toward our campsite in Yellowstone, we noticed a huge amount of smoke in the sky and figured that there must have been a forest fire. As we got closer to the site, it seemed that the fire must have been really close to our site. We can't remember the distance, but it really wasn't that far from our campgrounds. Luckily, it didn't become a problem, or we didn't have to leave or anything. We got to see helicopters fly overhead with bags of water. Allie really liked that. And we also had a neat sky that evening due to the smoke in the sky.

We weren't sure how Allie would do camping, so we planned on staying one night for sure, and then depending on how that night went, we'd decide whether to stay another night or not. Well, that was the plan. Allie ended up being afraid of tents, which doomed the first night. Nikki put her down in her pack-n-play, then after Allie cried for a bit, she calmed Allie down and tried to put her down again. Allie quickly worked herself up so much that she ended up vomiting in the pack-n-play. Yuck! So she wasn't going to be able to sleep in the pack-n-play. So we decided to try and get her to sleep between us on the air mattress. That may have worked, but thanks to our neighbors who had a VERY bright light on and were playing a noisy game of Rummikub, Allie completely woke up after some time of fitfully trying to sleep. Next plan: the car. We drove around for awhile trying to get Allie to sleep, which she finally did fall asleep. So Nikki slept in the front passenger seat of the car with Allie in her car seat for a few hours. But then Allie really started to fuss and she ended up sleeping on Nikki. Jared slept in the tent that night. But no one got a very good night's rest.

Here's a picture of Allie the next morning with her sippy cup and the dogs, Taco and Cookie. These are two of Allie's greatest loves (sippy cup and dogs). Notice that she had made herself comfortable on Mommy's foot.

We had decided to go home the next evening. So we wanted to cram everything we wanted to see into one day. Here are some pictures from the day's adventures.

Dragon's Mouth at Mud Volcano (with steam that wreaked of sulfur coming out)

Allie on Grandpa Larry's shoulders, Orion, and Jared at Mud Volcano

Allie looking at scenery

Allie charging on to see next sight

Stinky, Bubbly, Gray Mud at Mud Volcano

Hayden Valley dotted with Buffalo

Another view of Buffalo in Hayden Valley

Allie looking out the van window at Buffalo (we weren't moving because of them)

An Elk with a huge rack

Allie riding in style on Daddy's back - Thanks goes out to the Hills for the back carrier!

We planned on going on a little hike along the canyon. Part of this hike included a side trail called Uncle Tom's Trail. It is a 500 ft descend with somewhere around 325 steps. We somehow did not think to get a picture of all the steps. But you can go here to see what it looked like. Going down wasn't bad; it was going up that slowed us down. But all of us felt that it was worth getting so close to the Lower Falls within the Canyon. Thanks, Grandpa Larry, for joining us on that side trail. We met up with everyone else at Artist Point at the end of the trail.

At the bottom of 350 steps or so on Uncle Tom's Trail

Lower Falls

Rainbow in the mist of Lower Falls

A big bug on the stair rail on our way up

View of the Canyon, looking toward Artist Point

Opposite wall in Canyon. The camera doesn't really do justice. It was really spectacular.

Along the trail, we found this little guy. Actually, Jared found him. But we could add one more animal to our list of animals seen at Yellowstone.

View of the Lower Falls, either from along the trail somewhere or from Artist Point

From the Canyon, we headed to the Norris area and saw the Norris Geyser Basin. It was really amazing to see how many geysers there were and how big the geothermal area was. We won't have captions for all of the pictures, because we don't really remember the names of each geyser. But we are sharing just a few of all the cool pictures we took.

Looking over one side of the Norris Geyser Basin

The different colors coincide with different elements and bacteria that are in different temperatures of water. I believe orange was the hottest, then yellow, then green.

We just thought this was kinda funny: How did they get this sign there?

Everyone was exhausted after the Norris Geyser Basin, so we headed back to camp. We passed through Hayden Valley again, and this time the buffalo were crossing the road in several spots. We got to see many up close, which was neat. But it also made the drive back to camp even longer.

Baby Buffalo

Buffalo that weren't in any hurry

There is a brown spot under one of the tree branches about halfway up - it's a Grizzly Bear!

Maybe we should have stuck to our plan, but we didn't get to see everything we wanted to see, so we braved another night. We slept, or tried to sleep, in Grandma and Grandpa's big van. We'll spare you all the details, but it was NOT a better night. Allie just doesn't seem to be much of a camper. Luckily, though, she was still quite the trooper during the day.

We headed up to the Northeast corner of Yellowstone to see if we could find any more wildlife. We had great luck.

Just a pretty view

Mama Grizzly with her two cubs (near the rocks in the middle)

Mama Grizzly crossed the road only a car or two in front of us.

Cub standing on hind feet

Two cubs following Mama

Black Bear (Rosie) only 50 yards off the road in Roosevelt area

They call this one, "Allie"
She was having fun with Aunt Sunny's sunglasses

Another close encounter with a buffalo

Daddy and Allie looking out at something together (maybe a waterfall?)

Allie looking at waterfall (Tower Fall)

Pronghorn Antelope

More Antelope

Allie taking the wheel for awhile
(we were actually stopped for construction)

Old Faithful
We took lots of video, but got no pictures of the water shooting up. Oh Well.

There were a lot of geysers to see around Old Faithful. It was neat to walk around and see all the geothermal activity. Here are some pictures.

Allie enjoying the river. She had a hard time leaving the bridge to continue on.

Pointing at something of interest

Allie all tuckered out. She fell asleep in Daddy's arms before we made it back to the start of the loop.

Allie with Grandma Carren and Grandpa Larry

All of us

Just a little tangent: Allie was really excited when she got her little red hat. She always gets excited when Daddy puts his hat on, because she knows it means that he's going to go outside and that she'll probably get to go with him. So having a baseball cap like Daddy's was pretty exciting for her.

We left Old Faithful and headed home. We had wanted to visit Jackson, Wyoming before leaving Rexburg, but we hadn't had the chance, yet. So we decided to drive home that way. We didn't make it to Jackson on time to go to the Bar J Wranglers (sad), but we did go to Bubba's BBQ, which was mighty tasty.

Here are some pretty pictures from our drive home.

The Grand Tetons

Another shot of the Grand Tetons and some cool clouds

We were a little sad that we hadn't seen a moose in Yellowstone, but luckily we had the chance on our way out of Jackson. He is a black circle in the picture below. He is closer to the tree on the left. about 1/2 an inch or so up from the grass. You can't really tell he is a moose, but in person we could tell.

Moose on way out of Jackson, Wyoming

We obviously made it home safe and sound. It was very nice to get home and have our own bed and to have Allie's crib for her. We all got the best night's sleep we had had in a few nights.

We didn't get pictures of all the animals we saw, but we really enjoyed seeing all the wildlife in Yellowstone. We also really enjoyed the geysers. This earth is really amazing and beautiful.