Day 7 (the Tetons!)

Day seven...the day we leave Yellowstone. Our last drive down the 6-mile bumpy driveway (hurrah! says Daddy!). Our last drive through the Northern Yellowstone entrance. Our last view of the beautiful beautiful park. On to the Tetons! We spent a couple hours at Jenny Lake, but couldn't stay long because we were planning to get to our dear friends, the Shooks, before it got too dark to see our way. Um....is 11pm too dark? We conveniently blame Bossy Betty, our GPS for taking us the long way. Wow what a twisty, dark road that seemed to go on foreeeeever!! But we did get there at long last, and had a lovely visit with our friends the next day. Then, that night, I said goodbye to my family as they drove to their motel room. They were leaving me BEHIND and driving the first leg home the next morning. I stayed on with my friend Michelle for about 2 more weeks. :) It was very strange to see them drive away without me though. The family got home safely, and everyone, I've heard, slept in until nearly 11am the next day!! What a vacation!! And what an amazing place!! We all would do it again, long days of driving and all, in a heartbeat. :) It was so neat to see a different part of the country. The Lord is so full of variety! Even in our own USA the landscape varies so much! We saw so many glimpses of His awesomeness in all the beauty. Such a GREAT God He is!!

Day 6

And this is our last full day in Yellowstone. We drive through it one last time on our way out, but this is the last "real" sightseeing day. *sigh* It was a really great day though. We drove down to Norris (see map here), dropped the boys off for a bikeride, and kept going, visiting all the paintpot/geyser stops along the way (boardwalks! Mom LOVED the boardwalks! You could get right up to the geysers and walk all around the paintpots). We saw the most adorable coyote on this drive! And lots of buffalo. Met the boys down at Old Faithful, and then made a big loop back up the eastern side and to our cabin. Stopped several places along the way, including a beautiful place by the Yellowstone lake that also has lots of paintpots and hot springs. The highlight was coming around a turn in the road on a more desolate part of the park, and seeing a GRIZZLY! He was just lumbering along, not paying any attention to us. It was SO NEAT!!! He was the one animal that we all really wanted to see, but hadn't yet, so it was a special "last day" present from the Lord that we got to see him.

So we got home pretty late that day, and did our best to pack up what we could. *sniff sniff* Everyone was car-tired and sad that this was our last night in our cabin. But had no trouble whatsoever falling asleep!!

Day 5

I am ashamed. I should have had these done long ago...and yet I still have several days to go! Oh well. There's nothing horrible about having to go back through the pictures yet again!!

So this is day 5, September 13th. A Saturday. Today was our half rest day. We only ventured a little ways into Yellowstone, in search of a river to play in, since that had been the highlight for some on the days we had lunch by a stream. :) We'd noticed on previous outings a river that seemed to have a path beside it, and so went searching for that one. As it turns out, the river we ended up at was indeed one for wading in. Well, swimming in, as a matter of fact. People were walking by (in the breezy, 50 degree weather mind you!) in swimming attire, with towels! We finally discovered that the river we'd found was near where a boiling stream ran into the cold river. Arrange a few rocks to hold in some of the warm water in pools, and voila, a warm bath tub! Pretty cool. :) And provided some neat pictures of the steamy-ness. However, because of all the people, we weren't able to skip stones, and so left the park in favor of a river closer to home that we could play in. The Gardiner River runs right in front of our "driveway" entrance, so we ended up there, playing "bomb the ship". Daddy would throw a stick into the river from a ways upstream, and the kids would watch for it coming, rocks in hand. Once somebody spotted it, all rocks let loose! We did it until we noticed some fishermen getting ready to head out into the river for a fishing expedition. We wouldn't have been very popular if we kept up the racket we were, so Daddy called a ceasefire, and we went on home. This was probably pretty much the first day we actually were home in time for a normal supper time. :)

For reference...

Our cabin was about 20 minutes (ha ha, not counting the crazy 6-mile gravel driveway that took 20 minutes to drive out of!) from the NORTH entrance. We did a lot of driving. :)

Picture from http://www.yellowstonenationalpark.com/

Day 4

At last another Yellowstone slide! I kind of forgot that I hadn't finished these yet! This slideshow is of our fourth day in Yellowstone. This day's objective was to drive across the north side of the park, down the West side, and about half way to the East entrance. We stopped for lunch near the entrance to the trail head of Avalanche Peak, where Dad, Tyler, Sam, and I were planning to spend a few hours hiking. Trail length was roughly 4-miles for the round-trip. The elevation gain was about 2100 ft, which got us to 10,568 ft elevation. First 20 minutes or so were a little rough on the lungs, before we got used to it. So we just stopped when we had to, drank water, and scared the bears away by singing country western music (but that's a different story). Mom and the girls, meanwhile, went and built sandcastles by Yellowstone Lake. :) A fun day for all! The hikers finished their hike a bit ahead of schedule, however, and found themselves momentarily stranded, since the lake was 30 minutes away and we still had an hour or so until the time we'd asked Mom to meet us back at the trail head. Since our lunch area (and, more imporantly, the facilities) was only about 1 mile down the road, we decided to start walking, instead of waiting. As we neared our destination, we ran into a buffalo, right next to the road! Not wanting to disturb or otherwise upset the fellow, we tiptoed to the other side of the road and kept going. As we were juuuust about to our lunch area, our big, friendly, most-welcome van drove into view. Mom had left early, and was coming to our rescue. Rounds were made once again at the lunch-area facilities, and all were happy to rest their legs on the long drive home.

Day 3

This slideshow is of our 3th day exploring Yellowstone. The day before this we stuck near home, doing laundry and exploring all the gift shops in Gardiner. Nothing very picture-worthy. :) Although I suppose our stacks of laundry were large enough to be worth a picture or two. I didn't take any though. Sorry. But on this day in Yellowstone, we explored the Canyon side of Yellowstone (east side). Such different scenery from the west side! Lots of waterfalls and amazing overlooks.

Yellowstone Highlight

Here it is. The Petrified Tree. Cool, huh? The boys wanted their picture taken with it so they could preserve the memory of their favorite landmark forever. After seeing it for the first time, we talked about it the rest of the trip, since we passed the turnoff to see it nearly every day. How difficult it was to pass it up each time!! Tyler and Sam in particular just begged to be allowed to see it one last time before we left, but because of our tight schedule, it just never worked out. Thank goodness for cameras, eh?

With all sincerity, I thought it really was pretty neat. This redwood tree was probably petrified during the flood! Which means it's...old. I love old things. And history. So it was my kinda landmark. Years ago, there were supposedly 2 other stumps just like this one, but they were slowly chipped away by visitors looking for souvenirs. Hence the bars. We did get to bring home some petrified wood though, since we found some in a river we were playing in. :) So much variety to be found here!

Day 2

More Yellowstone pictures! These are from our second day in the park. We visited Mammoth Hot Springs, and traveled across the northern section of road, stopping at anything and everything we wanted to. Including the petrified tree, which was everyone's favorite (who doesn't like a stump of dead wood behind bars?) Well, I thought it was cool, anyway. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of that most noble of tree stumps...or at least, it turned sideways when I tried to put it into the slide show. It may have to get a separate post all to itself. *grin*

Day one

After our 2-day drive, and 1 day of resting up at our cabin, we entered Yellowstone for the first time! We drove all the way from the North entrance down the west side to Old Faithful. The geyser was the main attraction of the day, but we stopped at a few other neat hot springs, waterfalls, and beautiful picture taking sites along the way. :)

Home away from Home

This is a slideshow of our cabin on a buffalo ranch in Gardner, MT, as well as the surrounding property. They'd moved the buffalo because of the wolves and the nearby Yellowstone buffalo, but we still enjoyed the company of horses, miniature ponies, and friendly ranch dogs. Thankfully no grizzlies or wolves...as interesting as that might have been. :)

One thing that I don't have a picture of, but that we'll all remember forever is the loooong driveway to our cabin! It was 6 miles of gravel that took our poor van 20 minutes to drive. Everyone just sorta tingled for a minute or two after driving it. :P

The 33-hour drive

The first of what I hope is several slide shows depicting our westward travels :)