Yellowstone Park...

Dave and I decided to take the kids to Yellowstone Park this last weekend. We took them about 2 1/2 years ago when I was pregnant with Avery and they still talk about it. Well, at least Easton does. Paisley was still kind of young and doesn't remember much. I was pretty excited, but a little worried about the long day in the car with the 3 kids!

We left about 9:20 a.m. and got to West Yellowstone right about 11:00. Not too bad. The kids all did well on the ride down. We have two portable DVD players, so Easton watched his movies and the girls watched theirs. They were all quiet and happy!

We decided to do the whole loop around the perimeter of the park. We knew it would be a long day, but we wanted to see Old Faithful which was in the south and Mammoth which was clear up north. So, we headed out...

We saw a bald eagle up in her nest. That was really neat. Soon after that we saw several buffalo, which we ended up seeing a ton of all through the park.


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Those are amazing animals! They are like tanks! Dave and I were talking about how bad it would be to hit one with your car! Anyway, then we stopped at some of the "stink pots".






They were stinky as always, but really neat to look at. The kids enjoyed them.

Then on to Old Faithful. We weren't sure when Old Faithful would be erupting next. We had packed a picnic lunch and were all pretty hungry at that point. So, we decided to eat our lunch down on the benches right by Old Faithful. It was a little chaotic fixing all of our sandwiches with only a bench and no table, but we managed.






We ended up watching Old Faithful erupt right as we were finishing up lunch. It worked out perfect, killed two birds with one stone! :)

We got back on the road again and drove for quite a while. We came to the Fishing Bridge and decided to get out and walk across the walk way on the bridge to let the kids stretch their legs.


I love this picture! This is my beautiful family walking towards the Fishing Bridge!

It worried us having Avery walk close to the railing with the big swift river flowing underneath. On the other side of the walk way was a bench you could sit on to look at the river. There would be bench and then a pillar and more bench. So, I had Avery walk along the bench and then when we got to a pillar, I would swing her out and around and back to the bench. She thought this was great fun! So, one of the times I swung her pretty quickly and I heard "plop". I looked down, and there was her shoe in the river!! We were high up, and there was no possible way to get it out.



I was SO sad! I loved her little shoes. They were my favorites! We hadn't had them long and she had hardly wore them!! So, the rest of the day we had to carry her or put her in the stroller because of her bare foot!! She kept asking, "Shoes, shoes?" and I would say "They went bye-bye in the water" and she would sadly say "oh." It was funny!

Then for the best part of the trip. We got into "bear country!" We got to see 5 bears in all! First a black bear, then a grizzly bear, then a baby black bear (didn't see the mother), and finally a mother and baby black bear. The first 3 bears that we saw were pretty close up. Not so close that we were in danger, but close enough to see clearly. It was the greatest thing! The kids were so excited! I had never seen a bear in the wild, and I didn't expect to see one that day. But, to see 5! We felt very lucky.

We also saw many elk, a deer, and a few antelope. We had a very good day for seeing animals! Unfortunately our camera battery died right after we lost Avery's shoe so we didn't get any pictures of the bears except on our cell phones. I will try to upload them somehow!

We finally got back to the town of West Yellowstone about 7:30 p.m. We stopped and had some dinner and then made it home about 10:30. It was such a fun day as a family! We were all EXHAUSTED, but happy! I am so glad that we took this trip!