Yellowstone!!!!!

Due to technical difficulties and never having time to figure it out, this post is what it is..the first two pictures are just a random thermal feature...

 

To recap, our adventures have included Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico, a train ride in Durango, CO and some new friends! and now onto Yellowstone! Although, honestly, any of the before mentioned places could have been a full vacation on their own, Yellowstone was the original intention. We just saw so many opportunities on the way, so we took advantage of them.

But, Yellowstone! Another really neat thing I have not mentioned so far is that my older kids did (or rather are doing) a History curriculum called "America the Beautiful" and Yellowstone and Mesa Verde National Park were in it! The kids had already studied those places and had their interest piqued! How neat is that? (yeah, I'm a nerd, so what?)

I'm hoping this will help give an idea of what I'm referring to when I mention areas....

Lindsay had a list of 3 things she really wanted to see at Yellowstone so we made sure to include those. You'll see pictures of all 3 in this post!

While driving the final leg of our journey we got some news that was pretty devastating to me-we had all been planning on my grandparents moving here and spending lots of time with them. Their house here was READY for them. All the work had been done. But a little over a month ago my grandma had to be taken to the hospital for her heart (atrial fibrillation and some bad valves and some blockage)....the drs said there was no way she could travel the 900'ish miles from there to here without having open heart surgery. Ok, no problem! But through all of this (and thank God the surgery went well) my grandpa decided he just couldn't move....so that's what I found out. Yes, I know...she's okay and that's what counts. But man was I looking forward to some time with my grandparents and for my kids to get to know them better...so it hurt! And the timing was less than wonderful. Sometimes I think it was BETTER when there were no cell phones. You couldn't get that kind of bad news on vacation. Right? I cry about once a year. Seriously. Just not a crier (not always a good thing, to not be able to cry, ya know?)...I cried for HOURS. Couldn't stop! But was trying to not let my kids see because I didn't want to put a damper on their special time. We had all looked forward to this for MONTHS!

So, driving the last leg, barely able to see through my tears...I saw a MOOSE! (the only one we would see in fact!) I'm more excited about it now than I was then...and we got to our hotel and checked in (Shout out to the Kelly Inn in West Yellowstone, Montana! Great place to stay in my opinion!)...it was pretty late but it stays light for a long time in Montana in the summer-in case you wondered.

The next morning I just could not pull out of my funk/depression. It seriously felt like my medications weren't working (remember, I deal with depression). The family went to breakfast and I laid in bed. And cried. And then, texting with my best friend and my mom...I managed to, with her help, realize that I needed to pull out of this and do this thing. For my kids. And basically I had to fake it til I could make it. I'm so glad I did! I got in the shower and this is what I found on my bedside table when I got out:

Who can argue with that? So, off we went to the IMAX (Yellowstone was the feature of course! I thought it might be good to see that first and get an idea of what we were seeing/looking for). And then next door to the Wolf and Grizzly Discovery Center!!!!

This guy was the low man on the totem pole in his pack and for some reason he just seemed so downtrodden. :( We all felt a little sad for him....

We went back to the Center later in the day to see the "feeding" of the wolves. You don't actually see the feeding but they take the wolves out of the enclosure/habitat to feed them and while they're gone the "keepers" come in and enrich the habitat. This is when the wolves were coming back in to their habitat to explore. It was really interesting!

We got really lucky and the day we went was the day of the week that they put live fish in their little stream! We thought maybe the wolves wouldn't care that much but wow! They went to town! Caught them all and ate them!

We finished at the Discovery Center and off we went into the park (yay!)

The first day or two you are pretty impressed with bison...then you have seen enough. LOL

But we loved seeing the mamas and babies. Even bison are cute with their babies!

Annnnnd....OLD FAITHFUL! We waited for quite a while and it was COOOOLD!!! (Apparently Montana doesn't really consider June to be summer!) And the funny thing is, it wasn't nearly as impressive as so many other of the thermal features at the park!? I was a little disappointed because it's the most famous!

Poor Nathan caught something just in time for our trip. :( Poor little guy was pretty miserable...and his cough sounded like he was strangling! We were a little (ok, a lot!) nervous because he has a scary history with croup that gets bad really fast with little warning! He was such a trooper most of the time though...Big brother is covering him up with his own jacket here!

Just to the right of the middle of the picture you can see a "pop" of bubbling mud. It was pretty cool! Hard to capture it in the picture though. :( Below is the description.

 

Doesn't this look like such a waste-land? Yet in the background you can see the gorgeous evergreens!

We were all set to walk around in the Old Faithful Area and my WONDERFUL husband came up with the idea to rent one of these bike trailer/strollers! It was the BEST idea I think he's ever had!! These two would have been alternately running around scaring me to death and complaining about how tired they were (before again running around...how is that "tired" children have energy to run around making you crazy?) At any rate...this stroller saved us a lot of grief (=best $12 ever spent!!!!)

Is she not one of the cutest things you've ever seen!? She bought a journal in her souvenir shopping and she was writing about her experiences in it while we waited for a geyser to go off. :)

This was one of the things she had her heart set on seeing! The Morning Glory Pool. It was pretty neat. Sadly, all the "orangey-brown" color is from algae growing due to people throwing things into the spring and therefore blocking the hole at the bottom, so the water cools just enough to let algae grow. But, the colors were still gorgeous.

If you want to know why they have to put fences around these thermal features..people have jumped into them and DIED. We bought a book called "Death in Yellowstone" while we were there and it describes the stupidity that people exhibit! I can't believe that people are dumb enough to jump into BOILING water. And then they're surprised when they...die!

No words needed, huh? Just beautimous!

See the steam? That water was probably beyond frigid, yet there was a hot spring off to the side of it.

Elk!