Yellowstone

I love reliving our trip through these photos. Yellowstone was such a magical, weird and beautiful place. It looked like mars, then heaven, then smelly, so many things! We had fun checking out the thermal pools and all the cool thermal features like hot springs, fumaroles and geysers.We couldn't believe the dragon's mouth was real. It was so smelly and weird. It felt like Disneyland, yet it wasn't made up--it was real! The colors of the landscape were unreal and it was definitely a highlight of the trip.

We spent 2 nights at the historic Old Faithful Inn. It was built over 100 years ago. We opted to stay in the original part of the hotel and it was comical how small our room was! They crammed 2 queen beds and a sink in it, and we walked down the hall to use the bathroom. Check out the photo of Clara in the claw foot tub in the "bath room". It was pretty cool! They had original writing desks throughout the lobby and a live piano player. We could see the geyser erupting from our room and imagined earlier generations staying their as they visited the park. It was an experience! 

After two nights at Old Faithful Inn we traveled to our first camping spot--Canyon Campground. The minute we got out of the car the kids took off building a "fort" with rocks and playing about. It was fun to see how much they love to camp and be in nature. We unloaded the car and finally had a chance to use all of our camping gear. Paul spent a lot of time researching tents and bought a nice, new, large tent for our family to use. We had already given it a practice run in Joshua Tree and it was a great tent. We began unpacking the poles, tarp, sleeping bags and rain fly... and couldn't find the actual tent. After searching frantically and scratching our heads, we concluded that the green tent bag was still in our garage in Fountain Valley. Needless to say, Paul was upset. I kept my mouth shut and tried to remind myself that it would be fine. No one was hurt. Maybe we could sleep in the car or all cram in Grant and Kelsey's tent. We said a little prayer and decided to see what they had for sale at the camp store. Just our luck, in Canyon Village at our campground there was a camp store with two four person tents left in stock! The saleslady took pity on Paul when she asked if he was a AAA member for a discount he said "how about the 'you forgot your tent'" discount. She gave him 10% off and $400 later we were the proud owners of 2 small tents that served us for the rest of our trip. The girls were happy to have their own "kid tent" and all things considered it actually worked out just fine for the rest of our trip.

Grant's hammock was a huge hit with the kids. Miraculously no limbs were broken after swinging in it. Grant and Kelsey's family were so fun to camp with. Hugh and Will had fun with the girls. We ate a lot of s'mores, sat around the blue colored fire, got rained on a couple of times and got really dirty. It was a successful two nights of camping and we all said we could have stayed at that campground longer.

Our hike to Yellowstone falls and the grand canyon of Yellowstone.

We spent a day driving through Lamar Valley and hiked to trout lake. We took Mumsi's fishing nets and the kids had a blast catching toads. They were so gross but the kids loved it and it was a picturesque spot for a picnic. The saw lots of bison and some even blocked the road and came really close the the car. Thankfully they just gave us the evil eye and kept on walking. Yellowstone is a beautiful place and I'm so happy we finally were able to see part of it!