Yellowstone

What can one say about Yellowstone that pictures cannot explain just as well?  But if I were to try and use words... it was a fun family trip that we all loved.  A lot of driving, but you cannot escape that with Yellowstone.  The boys did get tired of all the "animal sitings" that stalled traffic for 45 min when it was for one or two cow elk, we were hoping for buffalo or big horn sheep or something more exciting. But would we do it again?  YES!  Was is so fun and wonderful to be together as a family (even Steve and Jorge came to hang out for a few days)?  YES!  Did my boys love the smell of the sulfur cauldrons or the mud volcano?  NO!!  Did we love all of the beauties of nature, the little squirrels running around and the excitement of seeing something new each day?  YES!

So, to the pictures...

The wildlife

 We saw the herds of elk.  Cows, babies, and huge bull elk.

One of Peter's main missions was to see some buffalo/bison (the jury is still out on if there is really a difference).  We were fortunate enough to see this scraggly guy right by the road on our second day.  Then after that we searched and searched for those huge herds of bison.  Where were they?  We could find one or two loners here and there but that was it.  Only on our second to last day there did we find out they were WAY UP in Lamar Valley, complete opposite place than where we were.  So, the next day we headed out to find those herds, and we found them!

This herd the boys hiked to.

This buffalo was one of my favorite moments from the trip.  We were trying to get out of the park to go get dinner at the cabin.  When we hit upon a very long line of traffic crawling along the road.  We knew there was a animal somewhere but we did not know what it was.  We inched along for a long time.  Rob said it took us 2 hours to get to the cabin that night because of the hold up.  When we finally got to the animal siting we found this dude taking his sweet time up the road.  This buffalo had no idea he was holding up so much traffic, he was getting a police escort and did not have a care in the world.  I loved the police escort, I loved that one lone buffalo could cause such a hubbub.  Awesome!

 

We saw a herd of prong horns outside of the park almost everyday as we were coming and going.  They are fast.

We visited a place called the bear and wolf discovery center to see some large bears and some white wolves.  

On our way home we also visited a place called Bear World and saw 20 or so bears come and go as they pleased.

 Also at Bear World the kids got to pet a very soft and lovable fawn.

 This is a free little roller coaster the boys loved at Bear World.

We also saw the geysers, the "stink" pots, waterfalls, heart stopping heights, the beautiful colored pools and lots of trees.

And most importantly we spent time together as a family.