Yellowstone UEA

Last week was UEA, which means the kids had a 4-day weekend from school.  Road trip!  We haven't been to Yellowstone since Arden was a baby, so we thought we would make the drive and go and check it out.  The kids are older now, and we thought they would like the see the animals, the waterfalls, the geysers, the whole package.

 

My parents decided to tag along too, and we somehow shoved all our stuff into our Durango.  I wasn't sure how the drive would go, but we actually, surprisingly, did pretty good!  Have I told you how much I love the DVD player in the car!?!  I adore it.  How did parents survive road trips before that wonderful invention?  It also helps when Grandma and Grandpa come along for the ride.  Oh, and lots and lots and lots of treats and snacks don't hut either.  Getting out every hour or so go let someone go to the bathroom doesn't help us make good time, but it keeps the kids (and Grandpa, who was stuck in the back seat with Daxton) happy.  It is true it took us ALL DAY to make the drive, especially since we had to get a new tire in Pocatello after discovering an nail in the side wall of one of ours while stopping for lunch.  Bummer.  However, there were no major meltdowns, we didn't crash, and the yelling and threatening (Don't MAKE me pull this car over!) were kept to a minimum.

 

We made it to West Yellowstone, found our condo, quickly unpacked and then decided to drive into the park.  I forgot my camera.  Duh.  We didn't have much time to look around before it started getting dark, but we did see some elk and some hot springs.  I really wanted to see a bear on this trip,  a bear, since everyone I talk to who has been to Yellowstone always says how they saw a bear (or two or three) and I haven't seen one for years and years.  Day 1:  No bear. 

 

After we got back to the condo and ate dinner, we went through the usual shenanigans involved with the kids all trying to sleep in the same room.  Arden did awesome and went to sleep fast.  Cora and Dax dorked around for another hour before I took Dax away from Cora and put him to sleep in our room.  He went right to sleep after that.  Took me another hour of threatening and shhhhhhhh!ing before Cora finally gave in and fell asleep.  I moved Dax back to the kids' room and all was quiet...until 6:00 a.m. when my boy was bright eyed and bushy tailed in the pitch black darkness.  And if Dax is awake, ain't nobody sleeping.

 

Day 2 dawned nice and COLD.  I headed out into the freezing morning to do a 45-minute run as required by my half marathon training schedule.  The sunrise was beautiful, and even though my nose was running and my whole body was pretty pink with cold by the end, it wasn't too bad of a run.  I quickly showered and we headed to the park.

 

We ran across a large herd of elk right away, and not too much after that, a gigantic herd of buffalo.  Luckily, Grandpa had brought all 3 pairs of his binoculars (which kept the binocular fighting to a minimum), and the kids got nice, close up views of the animals.  Here is Arden, binocularing:

The kids were lovin' it!  I was surprised to see a couple of really small baby buffalo.  Aren't these guys supposed to show up in the spring, not the fall?  Stay warm, little guy!

 We stopped at some geyser basins and the kids marvelled at the steam and complained about the smell.  It was pretty cold and it was VERY windy at Midway Geyser basin, and I had Cora tucked into my coat much of the time, so I didn't get a lot of pictures taken.

We made it to Lower Geyser Basin, home of Old Faithful, in time for lunch.  We pulled up to a picnic table and got out all of our lunch stuff, but most of us ended up eating our sandwiches in the car, since it was a little cold for picnicking.  Preston, Dax and Grandma toughed it out.  We got lucky and saw this wolf (okay, it is a coyote) pretty close to our picnic area.

After lunch, we headed to see the geysers.  We had good timing, and Old Faithful was just ready to shoot off as we walked up.  Hooray!

After we watched the big show, we decided to look around at the rest of the geyser basin.  By this time, Cora had decided she had walked around in the cold for long enough, and started whining.  Not even Grandpa could get a smile out of this poor freezing girl.

 

 By the time we were halfway through our walk, Cora was seriously unhappy.  "I wanna go back to da car!  I cold!"

Eventually we did make it back to the parking lot, but made a quick stop to get the kids a souvenir and buy some extra jammies to put under Cora's clothes to make her warmer.  Unfortunately, as we were buckling Cora into the nice warm car, all of that crying caught up with her and she threw up all over herself.  Nice.  Even though it was only about 3:30 p.m. or so, that was our cue to head back to the condo (after cleaning up the mess and Grandpa and Grandma heading back into the store to buy a small sweatshirt and a blanket to put over and under Cora's barfy self).  The poor little thing fell right asleep as soon as we started driving, but woke up to barf again all over her new sweatshirt.  As soon as we got back to the condo and I put her in the bathtub, she perked right up, yelled, "I am all better now!" and proceeded to run circles around the condo for the rest of the night. 

The kids played, the adults tried to watch baseball, we ordered pizza (and did laundry) and had a pretty fun evening despite our setbacks.  Bedtime was a little better, but Cora was still the one with the most energy at the end of the night.  Must have been that 10 minute nap in the car.

Day 3 dawned COLD and WINDY.  I totally wussed out of running after stepping outside and feeling the nice icy wind hitting my face.  Grandpa was brave and did go for a run.  While we waited for him to return, Dax and Cora were spinning around and around in the nice, big family room.  They spun and spun and spun.  Cora gave up after a while, but Dax just kept going and going and spinning and spinning and then he stopped and barfed.  Yup.  We were 2 out of 3. I started wondering if maybe they were sick after all, until 1 minute after Dax barfed we had to tell him to stop spinning again.  Know your limits, boy! After that the spinning stopped.  Grandpa returned.  I begged Arden not to toss her cookies.

We all bundled up warmer than before!  Cora had on long socks, boots, leggings, jeans, a t-shirt, a long sleeve shirt, a sweatshirt and her coat, plus her hat.  And she still wanted to be carried around like this:

 She actually did a lot better and had a great time hiking up to Artist Paint Pots.  Grandpa and Preston carried her on their shoulders, and galloped around so that she bounced up and down, giggling like crazy.  All of the kids loved to see the mud from the mud pots fly up into the air, and enjoyed the blurping sound.  By the end of the hike, all three kids were on someone's shoulders, galloping down the trail.  If you have ever tried to gallop with a 40 pound kid on your shoulders, it is not easy.  But all the giggling is worth it.

We hiked around Norris Geyser Basin (Steamboat Geyser still didn't grant my wish to let me witness its eruption).  Daxton was excited to see Green Dragon springs, which is a bunch of hot pools that seem to come out of a cave.  Daxton started looking a little worried there was a real dragon in the cave, especially when Grandpa yelled out, "DRAGON!  Come out here!  We have some little kids for you to eat!"  Luckily, no dragon emerged.  Cora laughed and said, "Grampa, we are not food!" and we went on our way.

The sun would peak out from time to time, but the raindrops showed up now and then too.  The kids were doing pretty good for the most part.  After Norris, we headed over to Canyon.  It was raining pretty good by then so we were hoping the restaurant in Canyon village was open, but we were disappointed.  More sandwiches in the car (while watching a DVD.)

After lunch, we headed to the waterfalls.  First stop was the viewpoint for lower falls.  Aren't we cute?

I don't know if you can tell from this picture, but a hurricane force wind was blowing down the canyon and our teeth are chattering.  After this little experience, our plans to hike down the stairs by Lower Falls were quickly changed.  We instead decided to do the little wussy hike to upper falls, which the kids really liked and no one froze to death, which I liked.  And, bonus, no one fell over any cliffs (except for a deer we saw stuck halfway down the cliff...Preston wouldn't let me call the rangers to come save him.  Hope he found his way back up!). 

After that, we took the long drive to Yellowstone Lake.  The sun came out, and we saw more elk, more buffalo/bison, squirrels, a bald eagle, plenty of ravens, but still no bear.  We all refused to get out at the Sulfur Cauldron (named that for a very smelly reason) except for a small bathroom stop, despite my mom's unexplainable love for the place.  Sorry, mom.  You used to drag me to that stinky place all the time as a kid, but this time I was the one driving.  It reeks here.  Let's go. 

As we drove, Cora took another nap.  I used my best bear calls (Here, bear bear bear!), but still no sightings.  We made it to West Thumb Geyser Basin, and Cora refused to get out of the car.  The other kids were only to happy to get out and run around.  Arden loved to try and read the names of the geysers (she was pretty dang good!  She even got ones like "Turquoise Geyser."  Dax just liked to run around in general, as Dax is Dax.   He did a great job (for the most part) of staying on the path, and no thermal features and no little boys were damaged.  Thank you, guard rails!

We drove back around the rest of the loop, and drove on the Firehole Lake drive, where we saw our last geyser and hot pools, since we had to leave the next morning.  Still no bears.  By the time we got back to town, it was dark.  We stopped and grabbed some dinner at a little diner, and then walked back to the car. 

 

Guess what we saw!  A bear:

Don't the kids look happy?  Okay, so he wasn't exactly "alive," but it is as close as we got. 

The drive home seemed to take a little longer than the drive up, but doesn't it always?  We stopped and looked at the bridge and Big Springs, and fed the rest of our bread to the trout, the ducks, and a few muskrats who live there. 

The kids have been talking about how fun in was in "Yewwowstone" all week.  I am glad they can remember the good stuff and hopefully forget about the wind and the cold and the barfing.  Dax wants to go back right now! Especially since he thinks he left one of his dragon gloves somewhere up there.  Cora's memory is still too vivid, and she says she wants to go back too, but only "if its warmer."  Arden says she is good as long as there are treats and binoculars. 

I vote that next time, there should be more bears.  And less barfing.