Yellowstone Day 1

When we signed up Gavin for OYA at BYU-Idaho we were excited to discover a shuttle service from the Conference Center in Salt Lake to Rexburg.  I tried to sign him up a few times and found myself getting distracted or just plain not wanting to do it.  I finally put Greg in charge of it.  That night when I asked him if he got around to it, he said, "I entered in all his information, put in our credit card number and went to hit submit.  I couldn't to it.  I know that Gavin is not supposed to be on that bus."  Okay.  While I didn't like hearing that we would be driving to Idaho twice in one week, I trust Greg completely - especially when it comes to matters of the Spirit.  We don't know why Gavin was not suppose to ride the shuttle, but, in faith, we listened to the Spirit.
Greg took Monday off work to drive Gavin to BYU-Idaho.  On Friday, Greg took work off again to drive to Idaho.  This time the whole family went with him.  Since Rexburg isn't far from Yellowstone, we made a family trip out of the weekend.
We picked Gavin up (I tried not to let him see how teary I was because I didn't want to embarrass him) in Rexburg and headed north to Ashton, Idaho.  We had a very difficult time finding a hotel with short notice.  The closest we could find (that wasn't $250 a night) was in Ashton, which is about one hour south of West Yellowstone.  Greg found a great, little place called Rankin Motor Inn.  It is a cluster of white cabins, that I'm sure, was built in the 1930's (and remodeled in the 1970's).  They were roomy and clean and our family fit well in our two bedroom cabin with a kitchenette.

Our cabin was close to a supermarket and we ran over Friday night and did some grocery shopping to last us the weekend.  We also found some fun places to eat in town - a pizzeria with an old-fashioned soda fountain (where Greg tried a huckleberry soda with phosphate) and a burger joint with great root beer floats.
When we checked in to our hotel, the owner, Mr. Rankin, advised us to take the longer, scenic route into Yellowstone because of road construction on the main highway.  I am so happy we did.  We drove through quaint towns, military rows of flowering potato fields, a herd of cows and a few fluffy sheep.  We also stopped to see Mesa Falls.   It was a short walk to the Falls and the kids were happy for the break from driving (at least some of them!).

It was stunningly breathtaking with the early-morning mist.  It looked like something you would see in a movie.

 

 

 

 

Aren't my boys handsome!?  It always surprises me to see Gavin next to Greg - not too much longer and Gavin will pass him up.  Greg was so happy to spend so much time with Guard on this trip and took over the feeding and diaper duties - I love the bottle sticking out of his pocket.  And, I think it is impossible for Enoch to look at the camera - I don't know how many pictures of I have of him on this trip and he is looking everywhere but the camera!

When we first entered Yellowstone, we got stuck behind a giant motor home going so slow and stopping to snap pictures of every animal they saw.  It was quite frustrating.  No kidding, later that day around 4pm, we got stuck behind the same motor home!  Ugh!  We did see many animals, but we didn't stop to talk picture of all of them.  We saw elk, squirrels, bison, an eagle and a few ravens.

 

 

 

 

 

We saw one bear, and thankfully he was quite tame!

 We crammed a lot into our Saturday in Yellowstone; we knew it would be our only full day in the park.  We visited a lot of geysers, big and small.  The kids had a lot of fun (and nobody complained that they were too stinky).  It was a bit cool, overcast and rainy, so when the geysers sent out a lot of warm air and steam it was quite dramatic.

 

 

 

 

 

It was probably against the rules to leave the boardwalk, but the kids found this great tree root that was the perfect picture taking spot.

 

 We took a break from sight seeing to have lunch - peanut butter and jelly from the car.

 

Mid-afternoon, we drove to the Yellowstone highlight, Old Faithful.  It wasn't as crowded as it could have been, but it was still quite busy.  Enoch had been asking about Old Faithful for months after seeing it on a commercial.  He was pretty excited to see it.  And it did live up to it's hype.

 

After viewing Old Faithful from the Lodge, we hiked up to the Observation Point.  We thought it would be a short, easy hike, but it was more than we were ready for.  It wasn't too steep, but longer than we thought. 

Greg carried Guard the whole way up.  Enoch and Kate ran most of the way.  The view from the top was great and it was fun to see Old Faithful from a different angle.  It doesn't look so big from way up there.

Enoch had ran ahead of us.  When the rest of the family got to the look out spot, we couldn't find him.  We looked everywhere and was calling out his name.  We finally found him.  He had ducked under the rail fence and climbed down onto a rock hanging over the cliff.  A man was sitting there and Enoch climbed out to talk to him.  Unfortunately for Enoch, this man wasn't very chatty, so it was really a one-sided conversation.  It scared the begeebees out of me!  We dragged him back and he was furious (and tired and hungry and sick of being bossed around).  He started screaming and Greg took him back down the path.  Everyone up there could hear him screaming for the next 20 minutes.  It was great.

After Enoch calmed down, we had a nice hike down. 

 

 

 

 

After we reached the Old Faithful Visitor Center, we went to turn in the kids Junior Ranger workbooks and discovered they had been lost.  It was quite disappointing for Enoch and Kate (and for Mom who had spent so much time encouraging Enoch and Kate to finish them), but they were gone and we didn't have time to do it again.

By then we were done.  We headed back down the path and drove back to the hotel.  The kids slept well that night and we were ready to go again the next morning.