Miles: 475 - all in Yellowstone
Anecdotal conclusions: People from Idaho are very impatient; people from Minnesota need to be at the front of the line; people, in general, get very stupid in the presence of dangerous wildlife.
Temperatures: 39 degrees - 85 degrees
Rainbows spotted: 4
Hailstorms: 1
Memories:
Camp Site View
Therese:
Grace sleepwalking in the tent and vehemently insisting that Danny was on her camp pad.
Heavenly sleep on an air mattress
So nice that the kids help out a lot with the set up and tear down of the campsite
Stress at getting a "first come first served" campsite
Elk walking through the campsite at 5:30 in the morning while I was cutting up apples
Mamma bear and her two cubs crossing the road in front of our car on our last day
The beautiful vast expanses of land
Driving on the lovely winding roads
Swimming in the juncture of the hot springs and the boiling river
Grace
Itchy ear
Water flowing backwards, upstream, over the Yellowstone River rapids
Playing the game Flux
Clepsydra geyser
Frozen Yogurt in my hair
Almost getting an ice-cream topping
Eating a billion sandwiches for lunches
Gordon
Waiting for the wagon train to pass before we could cross the road
Waiting for the impatient motorcyclist driving up the wrong side of the road and through a buffalo herd to get gored.
Osprey nest in the "Grand Canyon"
Hiking down the canyon with Danny
Buffalo bellowing at the cars on the highway
Watching Old Faithful off the Lodge Porch
The tent getting blown down on the first day
Danny
Getting beat in Flux 2 times
Waking up early
Paint Pots
Long line for ice-cream
Herds of Buffalo crossing the road
Freezing cold in the death water (walking through the river to the hot springs area.)
Eating beef stew and planning to make it with mom
The buffalo we thought was a grizzly for about 3 minutes
I don't think it's possible to understand the vastness and beauty of Yellowstone unless you stay there for a few days at least. If one were to drive in for a day it would seem like merely a crowded, touristy park with a beautiful landscape. But after spending four days in the park and driving the depth and breadth of it, it becomes obvious that even visiting time after time, year after year, a person would never see everything or discover all the unexpected treasures just around the bend or up the trail.
I'll let the pictures give you a sense of what we saw and I'll provide some details about our days.
First Day:
We got up early, but not quite as early as we had hoped. We packed quickly but not quite as quickly as we planned. We ate the super delicious breakfast just a little slower than normal because we threw in a cake and candles for Danny on his birthday. As a result, we left around 7:15, an hour later than we originally intended. Traffic was light, though, and with the exception of a bit of construction just outside the park, we made good time.
From everything we'd heard, if we arrived at the campgrounds before 11:00 we were sure to get a spot. However, as we were standing in line we heard the camp host say there were no more tent spots. It was a bit scary hearing person after person stepping up the window to renew their site for one more day and no one checking out. Just as I got up to the window a RV/Tent site opened up. As we would later learn, this was probably the least desirable camping spot. We could have stayed at the office and crossed our fingers that another spot would open up, but it seemed wiser to take what we could get and get the tent set up.
After a sweaty, windy, dusty set-up and lunch, we decided not to look for a hike since we were exhausted. We chose to drive to Old Faithful which needed to be checked off the "Yellowstone" list and seemed like possibly a more relaxing choice for the first day.
This was probably our only tactical error; and a necessary one as we learned that any place worth going involved a very long drive which had no relation to the number of miles it took to get there. We had been told this by many people but I think you really need to experience it to "get it." In addition, the "short" way to Old Faithful is undergoing major construction and narrows to one lane in some spots and is unpaved in many others so this added to our delay.
It was a very busy day in the park and the road was packed. Every roadside parking lot was so congested that the road slowed to a crawl for about a mile in each direction. Finding parking at Old Faithful was tough. But we got into the lodge with about 10 minutes to spare before the next scheduled gushing. It started while we were in line for Ice-cream. So I sent the others out to watch and got my view from the window next to the ice-cream counter. Still cool to see and the ice-cream was delicious.
Another long drive, dinner and then a relatively luxurious night's sleep on our new air-mattresses.
Second Day:
Campers who were leaving the day we arrived told us that swimming in the boiling river was not to be missed, especially for families. As an added bonus, it was a short drive from our campsite.
We headed over around 9:00 after breakfast. The pools at the Boiling River are one of only two hot springs areas Park visitors are allowed to swim. The pools are formed at the juncture of a cold, cold river and hot, hot springs. To reach this happy medium, visitors must travel about 25 yards through the freezing cold river water. The water is shallow but very uneven and full of rocks of various sizes and questionable traction. So the going was slow. In a couple places, water from a hot spring poured into the river. Depending on the current, the water could suddenly become extremely hot so we had to keep the kids on the other side of us and take the brunt of the temperature extremes.
But once we reached the pools which were walled off with rocks to keep the rapids on one side we were able to relax in calm waters. The kids had a great time in the warm water and especially enjoyed standing in a spot where hot met cold and having one leg in the hot water and one leg in the cold. We lingered as long as possible knowing that a very cold crossing was ahead of us.
After lunch we headed for the main Visitor's Center in Mammoth. The park has about a dozen visitor center areas which usually mark a lodge and or campsite. There is usually a small general store, gas and an information station. Just to give you an idea of how big the park is, we had to fill up with gas twice during our stay.
Our next stop was the Mammoth Terrace, a beautiful hike through many geothermal features. We hiked out on boardwalks that went past beautiful clear pools of extremely hot water. The pools ranged in color from blue to green to red depending on the temperature of the water.
We planned an early dinner because we wanted to drive out to the Lamar Valley which is referred to as "The Serengeti of America" because of it's landscape and variety of wildlife. The animals start to come out after the temperatures drop below 65 degrees.
We didn't see any grizzlies or moose but we saw many buffalo who often crossed the road right in front of our car. We also saw a black bear as it crossed the road and started up a tree on the other side of the road. The drive was beautiful and yet another entirely different landscape and climate than anything we had seen so far.
It took about an hour to get out to the valley and we drove on for another hour before turning back so by the time we returned it was time for bed. We planned to get up early the next day to drive the big loop around the entire park.
Day Three:
This was our last full day in the park and we left our campsite at 6:45 in the morning to head out on our adventure which would be a 10 hour road trip within the park.
Because we left early, we were able see some of the more popular sites on the road to Old Faithful at the south end of the park. We stopped at a couple paint pot sites. Grace had read up on these locations and was able to provide a nice guided tour. She pointed out the "bobby socks" trees in the distance. These trees were also called "drowned trees" because of a flood after an earthquake that rose to a high enough level on the trunks of the trees to kill them. Along all of our drive, we also saw the natural consequences of the fires that raged through the area several decades ago.
She also located a geyser that was almost constantly gushing and we enjoyed watching this for quite a while.
The day was very cold and very wet. Some of the beautiful bodies of hot water, while beautiful, were not as spectacular as they would have been on a clear, sunny day. This was especially true at the Prismatic Pond which was a deep blue, large pond. We had hoped to hike behind this pond to get the full effect, but by this time the parking lot was full and the rain was coming down.
We reached Old Faithful just around lunchtime and this time our timing was perfect. We grabbed a bite to eat and sat in rocking chairs on the lodge porch and watched Old Faithful show off.
Our way back to camp was the east loop which was about three times as long as the way down. The rain was really picking up, but the drive was beautiful. 
Probably the most spectacular spot was the "Grand Canyon" of Yellowstone. We pulled up to the parking lot just in time for a major hailstorm. We watched hikers desperately scramble back to their cars while ate our lunch of, as Grace would say, our billionth sandwich.
The sun came out briefly and we hiked to the overlook which had stunning views. We started on the hike down to the valley below but the pitch was extremely steep and neither Grace nor I had shoes with enough grip to make it. Gordon and Danny hiked down far enough to see an osprey nest.
Our next stop was quite unexpected. We had the usual random traffic jams when wildlife was spotted but we came upon a jam outside a nearby campground that seemed to have no explanation. About an hour earlier, we had seen ranger vehicles with their lights and sirens on rushing down the road ahead of us. This was evidently their destination. As we got closer we could see crowds on the road, people with nearly their entire bodies hanging out of car windows trying to get pictures. More rangers seemed to be dealing with the people than with whatever the commotion was. We drove a bit down the road and asked someone what was going on. He said that a bear had been loitering around the campsite and rangers were chasing it back into the wilderness. At that moment, I saw the ranger in the distance shoot some kind of air cannon or projectile into the bushes. Moments later, a big black bear was high tailing it for the hills. It was kind of mind blowing that people seemed to think that because they were within a few feet of a ranger and thus a few feet of a bear, they would be safe.
We returned to our waterlogged campsite around 5:30 and were contemplating splurging and going out to eat when suddenly the sun came out and along with it, a beautiful rainbow and our last camp dinner was on!
Day four:
This was our last day at Yellowstone and also our coldest morning. I woke up at about 5:00 freezing cold and couldn't get back to sleep. So I got up and made my coffee and was treated to a chorus of coyotes howling at the sunrise in the distance. Then suddenly, an elk wandered through our campsite. We decided to take the northeast exit from the park rather than the east entrance because this would lead us to some beautiful driving in Wyoming. So we headed out through the Lamar Valley again, not expecting to see much wildlife because it was already mid-day but we were wrong.
Amid chorus of "I'm Bored" coming from the back seat, we came upon herd after herd of buffalo. All were right near the road and crossing from both directions. Often they would walk along the shoulder of the road and if we had been foolish, we could have reached out and touched them. As it was, we were treated to really cool Bison bellows and a few minor skirmishes between bulls. At one point s motorcyclist, evidently not wanting to wait like the rest of us, made his way up the road in the wrong direction, weaving through bison. We were ready to video tape in case we needed to record the 13th bison goring at Yellowstone this year, but this guy lucked out.
About 45 minutes later, when we thought our excitement was over, we came upon another traffic jam with no apparent reason. We waited and waited and all of the sudden, right in front of us, out came a mother bear and her two cubs. They slowly walked across the road and while the mother bear lumbered up the other side of the ditch, we got so see her cubs galloping and frolicking alongside of her.
Not much later we said goodbye to Yellowstone and headed on to our next adventure.
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