Yellowstone

Mmmmm, fried Oreos?

A bucking bronco?  Why, we must have been at a rodeo!  It was the first for our family.  We caught the rodeo in Star Valley on our way up to another fun spot...

Did I say fun?  I meant smelly.  We went up to Yellowstone.  And it was fun AND smelly.

We stayed in the Grizzly RV park, which had seen a few grizzly bears the week before.  We made lots of noise on our little hikes!

After I brilliantly broke off the key to the Rhino IN the ignition, we booked a bus tour of the highlights of Yellowstone.  The kids loved Paint Pots.

The park has a boardwalk for visitors to walk on, since the ground can be scalding hot in several areas.  Tornado said, "Mom, stay on the boardwalk. I like you in my family and I don't want you to get boiled."

Thunder and I were pretty worried about Sunrise trying to jump in for a hot swim, so we hooked him up to us via his special bear backpack.  He was not so happy about that.

We put one on Tornado too, can't be too safe here.

Then we headed off to Old Faithful.  It erupts about every 90 minutes.  We took off in the opposite direction of the crowds and found a great spot to sit on the boardwalk.

We ate lunch while we waited.  Old Faithful did not disappoint when he finally erupted!

We had so much fun exploring and letting the kids run free.

This is taken at the Old Faithful Lodge.  What a beautiful, rustic building.  You can't tell, but Tornado was actually in time out on this bench.

Here is our big yellow bus!  Our tour guide was great.

We learned all about wildlife on the park and the reintroduction of wolves in 1995.  It was so interesting to hear about having wolves back in the park as the top predator has restored balance to most of the ecosystem there (elk herds back to regular sizes, trees growing taller than 4 feet due to less elk, more red foxes and rabbits, less soil erosion around river banks, more dense foliage in many places)

This is Upper Falls, I believe.

Inside the town of West Yellowstone is a fantastic park to visit called The Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center.  The have live wolves in one section, and live bears in the other.  It was awesome to get so close and watch them eat and move around.

We went on lots of fun walks, and the mosquitoes sure appreciated us being there!

On our drive home, we stopped in Idaho Falls where we used to live.  We stopped in Reed's Dairy for chocolate milk and ice cream.  It's the best- they put potato flakes in it and it is amazingly smooth and creamy.  And we drove by our very first house!

It was a great trip.  It will be fun to go back when the kids are a bit older and we can do some more fun hikes.