Family Vacation! Part 2

Yellowstone did not disappoint. This big guy greeted us about a half hour into the park. 

Yellowstone has to be one of the craziest places on the Earth! With all the smoking mountains, and the crazy cool waters.

I think the kids really liked it, even though we spent a lot of time in the car.  They had fun marking off all the animals we saw, and using their binoculars.

Everywhere you looked, it looked like something was going to explode!

Which was pretty cool.

This is what Bensen thinks of Old Faithful! He was more interested in the bottle then anything else.  It wore him right out.

The rest of us liked Old Faithful.  We even got to see it twice! The kids went into the visitors center and worked on becoming Jr. Rangers. By the time we were done, Old Faithful was ready to blow again.

This was at the Prismatic Spring or something!?! It was really steamy, and we didn't really get to see it, but everything around it was beautiful and amazing.

Here we are walking the boardwalk back down to the car.

Bensen liked this little hike.

We went to see the Firehole lake and ran into another Bison.

The kids loved this little trail. We had to keep reminding them not to run, we didn't want them falling into the boiling rivers!

Bensen loved being outside, he was always this happy.

Even when we stopped for potty breaks it was beautiful.  

I think this was called Firehole Canyon. 

A little farther up the river we hiked down and the kids got in a played. Wesley slipped and fell and got his clothes all wet.  He did not like having to ride home soaking wet! We tried to warn him. Lucky for him that was our last stop for the day.  We ate at a pizza place called The Gusher.   We got Taco Pizza, it was very good.  I think I ate over half of it myself!

The next day we headed North toward Mammoth. 

We stopped at Gibbon falls.  We also stopped at some more Paint Pots.  We stopped at some the day before also. 

They were pretty amazing. Every body liked this hike.

It was pretty, steamy, and smelly.

Everybody commented on our cute little bear, and Batman.  Jaycee got a lot of comments also.  We sure have cute kids.

We stopped at Norris and did a little loop.  We didn't go to Steamboat geyser, me and Mike were too tired.

We made it to Mammoth.  We saw Elk everywhere! The kids finished their Jr. Ranger books and were able to get there badges and were sworn in as Jr. Rangers.  That was pretty cute.
Here they are with their badges.

Wesley took the picture below.

Just outside of Mammoth Mike and the kids were able to swim in the boiling river. While they swam Bensen had a little snack.

Mike said the water on his right was burning hot, and on the left was freezing.  Wesley stayed in the cold water and Mike would occasionally try to push some hot water his way.  The further down the river the better the water temps, but it was much more crowed down there.

By the time they got done swimming it was starting to get late. We drove around for about a half an hour, then headed back to the hotel. It was dark while we were driving out.  Luckily we didn't see any animals.

On Sunday on our way home we stopped at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. This was by far the hardest hike we did.  It  was only 3/4 of a mile but it was a 600 ft drop.  Going down wasn't too bad, coming back up was hard.  But we made it.

This is the Lower fall.

This was right before we started back up.  I have a picture of us half way up however it was not very flattering.

Our last stop was at the Mud Volcano.

Wesley loved this hike.  In the loop we walked, there was the Sour Lake, said to be like battery acid, Mud Volcano, Fire Breathing Dragon, and Black Dragon.  Pretty much a little boys dream!

It was a great way to say good bye to Yellowstone...until next time.