Yellowstone

While we were up at Island Park, we decided to stay a extra few days and head into Yellowstone. It had been awhile since we'd been there.. (Aubree was 6 months old)

the first few animal sightings we saw were elk! the kids were pretty excited, we must have a million pictures of this one elk!

Then we saw a buffalo!! Merrick was super excited, ...... Aubree on the other hand was terrified and wouldn't even get out of the car!

we saw lots of water, water falls and rivers!


Then things got real exciting and Marc hit a HUGE pot hole and blew a tire!!

.... so while he was fixing the tire, I was taking pictures of this lake across the road from where we stuck!

so it turns out that the tire was toast and we needed a new one so it was back to West Yellowstone for us! and we hobbled out of the park on a donut tire!





we were able to get the tire fixed quickly and go back into the park for one more day, and try to see some more animals!

the kids were able to get up close to some wildlife!

..and saw some stinky water

we couldn't miss Old Faithful!! it was a cloudy day, so it was kinda hard to see. but we got the point and moved on!

we saw lots of people from all around the world. The guy behind them in orange was pretty funny and kept taking pictures of my kids, ... really were they more exciting than the paint pots?!

we climbed lots of stairs! LOTS AND LOTS of stairs!! I bet it was like 5 miles or so, or atleast it felt like it trying to drag the kids back up all those stairs (and we didn't even go all the way to the bottom)

p.s. it was raining too

** so Marc looked it up and it was only 1/3 of a mile down, it so felt like 5 miles!




then we got stuck in a traffic jam!! more like a buffalo jam!! it took us about 2 hours to get thru the traffic. but it was fun to see so many Buffalo!!

while we were sitting & waiting... it rained & hailed on us. (well just me, since I was the only one in our car hanging out the window taking pictures) but it was so worth it! The kids loved it. Aubree got over her fear of Buffalo and Merrick declared his new favorite animal was buffalo!!

we had one guy walking and taking his time no less, right in front of us. of course I realize the pictures would have been much better if we were coming from the other direction. But I was still going to take a million pictures.




here is one picture of the herd... this really does no justice there were patches like this everywhere! and on both sides of the road.

I was so happy to see so many buffalo. the first day we had only seen one. I had remembed as a kid seeing lots on the side of the road and being stuck in buffalo jams all the time, so I had been disappointed when we left the park the first day. and so worth going back the second if all we had done was see all these buffalo.

we made one more stop at some stinky water pots on our way out of the park. it was really nice because it was getting later and there were only two other groups of people.

oh and some silly silly boys!

we stopped at this lily pad pond so the kids could look, but because it was so late we all got eaten by mosquitos and it was a real quick stop!

we had a fun couple of days in Yellowstone, I'm so glad we went. I really hope the kids will remember it.