Yellowstone

We got to Yellowstone early Friday morning. The temperature was in the low 30s, but the boys wanted to have their shirts off!  Our first waterfall of Yellowstone!

Friday was our geyser day.  Waiting for Old Faithful to spout.

Beautiful!

I love the thermal pools

These are all taken at the Upper Geyser Basin

The days were hot and we enjoyed a little cooling off in the river!  

I like the wildlife in the orange shirt the best!

The bubbling mud pots were one of my favorite things!

We woke up at 5 am on Saturday to go see some early morning wildlife.  The fog on the river was awesome!  Sat. was our wildlife day.  We saw 9 of the 12 bears that we viewed on the whole trip, fields of buffalo, elk, etc. 

After watching animals for a few hours, we parked in a turn-out and made some pancakes for breakfast!

We hiked down to the Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  You get to stand right at the brink of the falls!  It was hard to capture the huge drop of the water!

Saying "waterfall!"

We went to a viewpoint a bit farther into the canyon and tried to get a picture of the waterfall that we had hiked to.

This mama black bear had 2 cubs in a tree nearby!  I tried to get a picture of them, but it was hard to see the difference between cub and tree.  We saw 6 black bears (2 mamas with 2 cubs each) and 6 grizzlies (2 mamas with 2 cubs each).  Jason also saw a lone grizzly, which may have been a male.

We took another hike to Tower Fall.  The path that takes you behind the waterfall was closed temporarily, so we missed out on that.

In the Lamar Valley we saw thousands of buffalo!  We also saw a pronghorn being taunted by a coyote.  That was fun to watch through a spotting scope.

Paint pots

Buffalo in the campground is quite a common sight!

And walking down the middle of the road..no big deal!

Wade and I exploring the Norris Geyser Basin

I'm requesting this waterfall for my backyard!

Big bull elk

I liked this waterfall!!

Buffalo chips make for a great campfire!

Sunday night we stayed at WorldMark in West Yellowstone.  It was nice to sleep in a real bed and do some laundry!  We'd had a straight week in our tent!  Mom and Dad S. met up with us there and went to Mammoth Hot Springs with us on Monday.

I remember from last time I was in Yellowstone (16 years ago!!) that the terraces were my favorite!  I was disappointed this year, because my favorite terrace, Minerva Terrace, was dry!!!  The water running over the terraces is what gives them this cool color.  Here is a smaller terrace that was running.

I forgot to mention in my other posts that each National Park has a Junior Ranger program.  The boys participated in the one in Zion, which involved finding animal tracks, animal holes, and picking up litter among other things.  Tristan collected a whole bag of litter that he insisted on bringing to the ranger to show!  Bryce Canyon's ranger program included drawing hoodoos and playing park bingo.  In Yellowstone they had to spot different types of wildlife and draw diagrams of geysers.  In each park the boys were successful in completing the Junior Ranger program and earned a park badge.  Here they are receiving their awards in Yellowstone under the big buffalo head.

Cool owl!

We stayed the next 3 nights in Grandpa and Grandma's trailer!

Tuesday morning we went to a bear and wolf exhibit.  Tristan was old enough to be in a program that involved hiding food in the bear's habitat and then watching them search for and eat the food that they had hidden.  It was an hour long program, must of which was spent listening to this guy talk about rules.  See Tristan?

Tristan had hidden his food under this log.  It was cool to see the bear easily flip the log and eat the food.

This is Takoda, Wade's favorite wolf.  He got a button with this wolf's picture on it.

My little wolf pups coming out of their den.

There was a raptor section too.