Wednesday, May 11th we set off for West Yellowstone! I was really sick that morning (I'm thinking it was from the insane workout the day before, because no one else got it, but still not really sure what it was... I was dead to the world) Poor Nate did all the last minute stuff (which is always a lot for us, we are pro-christa-nate-rs), pretty much on his own because I was just useless. Luckily I had prepared all of our meals the day before. We checked the kids out and were on our way! The drive up was pretty nice other than feeling like crap. The kids did really well, Nate and I got to talk a lot. It was pretty pleasant! It was a lot longer than I had remembered or anticipated, but we got to the condo around 6:00 and got settled in before too late.
Nate's parents have a Trendwest membership (or whatever it's called) and we always get to benefit from it when we go on trips with them. We stayed in this super nice condo for like 10 bucks a night. Just us, with Nate's parents down the hall and his brother and his family upstairs. After we got settled, we cooked up our Sweet and Sour Chicken and Ham Fried Rice. Such a yummy dinner.... especially for being a reheated one.... We were so happy to share it with everyone too. There was WAY too much of it! The girls had fun carrying the key card around visiting everyone. I think they felt all mature. Since we were in a room for only 6 people, Charity and Kelly went down the hall to sleep with Nate's parents at night.
Everyone took a while to fall asleep, but they all slept pretty well. I slept like a dream in the HUGE KING SIZE BED!!! LOVED THAT!!!
I liked that we didn't have to jump out of bed real fast in the morning and it was a casual getting ready time. We took off for the park around 10:00.
About 5 minutes out (I have no idea how long it really was, but it felt really soon) we saw our first herd of bison. I took way too many pictures. Here are a small fraction of them.
Look how cute this little baby is!!! I loved the baby ones. Good reason to go in the Spring, I decided.
Maybe this is too close and personal, but I thought it was sweet. How nice is it that she can nurse in public.
Ya gotta love the road blocks.
This was the first bear that we saw. Clear up on a hill.... I was pretty amazed to see a bear and I still need to give Nate his prize from our bet. What should his prize be, I wonder? I really didn't think we would see any bears. I don't think we did when I went to Yellowstone as a kid.
Charity seemed so happy this whole trip. She was pleasant 99% of the time. She was so grateful for everything the whole time too. I loved it. She loved being with her cousins and swimming, but she still had fun looking at the park too :).
Brad did really well too. He didn't seem overly impressed by the wildlife.... we're still trying to decide if our kids have just seen enough wildlife now that it just doesn't phase them. Not sure, but he was really anxious to see the geysers most of the trip :)
Look! Yellow. Stone.
Here's most of the kids.
Kelly was a really big helper too. So happy and fun in the car. She helped keep the mood up :) I think she enjoyed the swimming and cousins the most also :)
Jen was so awesome with Erika on the walk up Mammoth. She's got so much more patience than me. Erika sure loved her attention and I think she finally warmed up to her near the end of the trip....
I don't remember what everything is. Sorry. But I did take more than enough pictures! Scroll fast if it bores you.
While we were parked, eating lunch, these bison made their way over toward us. It is so strange to be so close with these huge creatures with nothing to protect you from them really. Kinda makes you realize your place in the whole scheme of things. Kind of humbling.
We saw these Elk up the mountain from us also. They didn't seem to worried about the bison either.
I don't know, maybe I just value my life too much, but these people got way too close for MY comfort! Scary.
And this is the second bear that we saw. He was a lot closer. So cool!!
This Hydrothermal Feature (I can't believe that's the first time I've said that phrase in this whole post!!! amazing) was probably my favorite. It just looked so pretty! And it's bubbling because of volcanic gasses, not because it's boiling. Just in case you were wondering. The temperature is just under boiling point.
HA! This still makes me laugh. At one point I looked back and saw Erika with the newspaper up like this. Cracks me up.
This is the awesome coyote we saw. He walked around by the water for a while and then ran up the embankment, across the road, up a hill and wrestled with some animal (there's a debate whether it was a bird or a squirrel, so I'm not going to say which), and walked off with it in his mouth.... pretty cool. All with a huge audience of people. I can't believe how many photographers there were up there. With THE HUGEST, NICEST cameras, I've EVER seen! I wonder if them make any money doing it or if it's strictly hobby......
I loved these clouds. It was SO beautiful up there. The weather was fantastic, perfect temperatures, no rain (NO SNOW!!), just beautiful! Sure beat the jacket/coat weather we were anticipating.
Wehn we got back to the condo, Nate let me take the kids to the pool while he cooked up the meatballs and mashed potatoes. See how sweet he is! Fun swimming, good food, and then the Taylors showed up! The kids played around a little and then we hit the sack (way later than I'm used to these days!)
Friday morning we headed on out again for some more Yellowstone sightseeing.
Erika had a tricky time on this vacation. First, I must say that she did really well for a 1 1/2 year old. I really don't think we could have expected more and espedcially compared to some of the cousins her age, I can say, we lucked out. BUT that being said, she was not a happy camper a LOT of the time. She didn't love getting in her carseat after every stop. She didn't love driving around, and she was just completely unimpressed by everything that we saw (assuming she could even see it, based on her position in the car, she probably didn't even see a whole lot). She DID love swimming at the condo at night, and she did love all the walks and running around. That is her favorite :)
Noah was a pretty good boy! He wasn't all that impressed with anything, but he did a good job in the car. In fact, his "driving game" with Nate was probably about the funniest thing I've witnessed in a LONG time. I will share the details of that with you later. But he's very good at keeping himself entertained. And as I've said a million times before.... VERY imaginative.
Nate was such a fun vacationy dad. It's nice to have someone who's relaxing and easy-going at a time like that. He's good at dealing with what comes. He is all the time anyway, but it was extra nice on this trip. I just love him, what can I say.
The Southern Loop, where we were the second day, seemed snowier than the Northern loop, which didn't make a lot of sense, but either way. I really loved the white landscape. Reminded us of Alaska.
Check out that wall of snow!!! It was as tall as our car.
sulfur smell
Lukey was pretty enjoyable the whole trip as well. (Did I mention my kids are perfect? HA!) He seemed really quiet a lot of the time. How he usually is in the car I guess. But he played the games and enjoyed seeing the animals. He LOVED swimming!
I love how Noah runs :) He's our little super hero.
Can't wait to see what we got on video on this trip :) The kids were our videographers :)
Is this a raven or a crow? They didn't seem quite big enough to be ravens.... but I do love black birds. They look so cool!
We got to Old Faithful just minutes after it had gone off. Which was slightly disappointing considering it was already getting late. We knew we had an hour and ten minutes before it went off and we didn't think we could make it all the way out to Morning Glory and back before Old Faithful would go off again. We decided we would try to see Morning Glory the next day on our way out of the Park since we were planning on going out the South Gate and taking a more scenic route home.... So this cool little hydrothermal feature was on the little walk around Old Faithful.
waiting... waiting....
Thar she blows! (or he.... is it a he or a she?)
zoomed in...
That second day was really fun, and the kids kept saying they were having fun "but, when can we go swimming?" So we made sure to leave some time to swim when we got back to the condo. We swam, ate the yummy barbecue, and then swam some more. The kids all watched part of Yogi Bear together, and ran the night out. It was a lot of fun.
Erika absolutely LOVED swimming!! She had a lot of fun in the kiddie pool, but she kept asking me to take her over to the big pool. She would hang on to me so tight, it was so cute!!
Noah and Luke had a blast in the kiddie pool. They were out of control!!! SO FUN!!
So at about 4:00 Saturday morning, (I should mention that Friday night, while we were tired, we had been debating and rethinking oiur decision to go through the South Gate, and Tetons, and weren't so sure we wanted the extra hoursin the car) I woke up to Noah SCREAMING, "MOMMY, I GOING THWOW UP!!!" just hysterically, it was so insane. I got up and walked him to the toilet, and he swallowed a few times then said he was fine. I wasn't all that coherent I don't think, because I walked him back to his bed, tucked him in and went back to my bed. Well, of course a few minutes later, he was screaming again and this time, coughing also. So I jumped out of bed, flew into the kitchen, grabbed a bowl and had it right there, just in time to catch the vomit. SO CRAZY!!! Ya know how your heart pumps really fast when you've been jolted awake? (well mine does) this time it was just going like mad!! It was only a few more minutes and a few more cookie launches later, that Nate and I were both like, "let's just go straight home tomorrow". There was no way we were going to try an extra long ride home with the chances of vomit. I think if I'd thought it out a little harder, I would have not let stop us, Noah really must have some kind of problem, allergy or aversion to food or something, because he throws up way too often, and no one else does. Or maybe it's just because he sucks his fingers.... who knows. But either way it turned out to be a good thing, and a blessing since there was a landslide on the route we would have taken and we would have had to back track all the way back up through Yellowstone and back down the normal way. So that saved us a LOT of trouble. I'm considering it a tender little mercy :).... and poor sweet little Noah was fine the rest of the day.... didn't hae any other episodes.
So Saturday, later in the morning (after Nate let me go back to bed for a couple hours while he entertained Erika and Noah), we got the whole condo cleaned up and presentable for Becky and her family. And packed up and left. The drive home seemed long. Noah and Nate played the "driving game" for about 3 hours straight. I kid you not. So I slept a little of the way. We did however find this really fun place to stop for lunch and to shake out our legs a little. It was this little lake and park. Seemed fairly new. I sat and just took pictures the entire time, so you can imagine how many I got. Unfortunately I never did get the backside view of all six of them in front of the lake like I had wanted..... maybe next time. But here are some of the pictures.
Brad did a lot of rock finding and throwing. We didn't get much of the front of him :)
Kelly had her shoes off before she got out of the car and rolled up her pants shortly after. She played in the water a lot. She looked so pretty out there!
Erika carried around her string cheese, got dirty, stepped in the water up to her knees, and had a lot of fun squealing at the dogs around us. She was a complete mess by the time we got done. And she looked like she was wearing a wife beater under her jogging suit :) HA!
Noah did a lot of rock throwing as well. That was one thing he had wanted to do with all the hydrothermal features at Yellowstone, but was forbidden, so this was a chance to give him what he wanted :) He loved it. It was hard to get him to leave when it was time to go.
Lukey found the jackpot of smooth rocks. He brought us about 30 really beautiful, shiny rocks while we sat there. He just kept running out and coming back with a new cool rock. He loved it. And of course the rocks are now hanging out in our backyard.
Charity got in the water a little also. She's getting too cool to really do the kid thing these days. She looked so pretty out there too. She liked watching the dogs with Erika too.
one, two, three, four, five..... where's Erika??
Oh, of course, she's over there, overseeing those strangers digging a hole. Sometimes she's just SO not shy :) Makes me laugh.
And that's it. I plan to make a list of the favorites from this trip, whether I add it to this one or not.... it's coming!
