The Top 36 Countdown

This was a wonderful family vacation.

It started off on Friday when we picked up our rented mini van and

the kids were beyond excited, they thought it was the best thing ever.

I did too until I pulled a strap not knowing what it did and the seat flung

forward and hit me in the bridge of the nose....which I think I might of cracked.

Saturday morning we were off bright and early and ready to go.

Thanks to my Aunt Yvette and Uncle Lee we had a place to stay and our own tour guides!

Old Faithful

We had rain every day we were there but it didn't stop us from getting to everything

that we wanted to do, it just made for some dreary pictures.

Mesa Falls

The visitors center here was great for the kids, especially when you have

one like Cody who really likes to read and study everything.

Anyplace that we went we had to check out the visitors centers or information spots.

This room was full of animal furs that had a sign that said, Please Touch...so we did.

When I was taking this picture Cody finished reading the sign which also said,

Please Touch but do not remove the animals from the table.

Oops!

I finished taking my picture but Cody very loudly repeated the information to me

even though I was giving him the sign to shush to which he then replied,

"Oh, Manager!"

I just about killed him.

Cody also had me worried when we stopped to have a picnic in the park

and he had thrown a piece of his sandwich to a chipmunk and then I did the same.

A park ranger came over with a trash bag to make sure we were cleaning up after ourselves and

then pointed out Cody's sandwich that needed to be picked up also. I sat there panicked waiting

for Cody to say that I threw out my sandwich too, but thankfully he didn't and I hurried to find

it and throw it away!

Ryan just had to have the stuffed wolf he is holding in the picture, he fell in love

with it and named him Fox.

These baby buffalo watched their mommas cross the river but were too scared

to follow, after awhile one of the moms crossed back over to get them to go.

We didn't get to see all of the animals that we were hoping for like a bear, wolf or moose

but we did see, buffalo, bald eagles, antelope, elk, swan, trout, mink, squirrels, chipmunks, pelicans and many many birds.

My Uncle Lee had a bird feeder outside their cabin and he taught Cody all the different kinds of birds that landed out there.

The kids were all asleep in the back when we came upon this...

Luke was the only one to wake up and see it.

We saw this bald eagle quite a few times. In the next picture you can see

that the momma eagle is sitting on the nest.


The yellowish rocks from which Yellowstone got it's name.

Here at Artists Point looking at the Yellowstone River below.
It would make my stomach queasy just looking over the edge and seeing how high above we were.

Our average wake up time on vacation was between 5:45 and 6:15.

We did make it to the Grizzly & Wolf Recovery Center, so we

did get to see some bear and wolves, but in captivity.

The older boys got to feed the bears, Ryan was so bummed that he wasn't old enough.

They each got a bucket of food to go and hide while the bears were caged up and then once

they were done and out safely they would let the bears out to find the food.

We also found out some interesting bear facts.

Bears can smell up to 10 miles away, smell a pop can underwater and

even smell the difference between two kinds of pop.

This bear was pulling up the rocks to find the food.

Within 30 minutes we had been in Idaho, Montana and Wyoming on some days.
The kids had fun just exploring right next to the cabin

Everyday Ryan would ask if we were going fishing, so finally we headed to this pond

to try and catch some fish. No luck though, but the kids didn't seem to mind they had

fun throwing dirt chunks in the water, playing with worms and walking around with sticks.

The dock we were on came unhooked on one side and it started floating away with Heath still on it, he wasn't really going anywhere but Ryan started crying thinking his dad was going to die and a big wave was going to crash on him. Looks pretty dangerous, doesn't it!

This is the headwaters to the Henry's Fork of the Snake River,

where it starts. The water is just bubbling up from the ground and is crystal clear.

We fed some huge rainbow trout canned corn from the bridge and then walked

back to that little cabin in the picture.

We also visited Quake Lake that was created from an Earthquake

when the side of a mountain came down. It happened in the middle of the night

and fell on a campground below, scary.

This is the Norris Geyser Basin.

There is a boardwalk that you can walk around and get a close up look at the

geysers and pools. Once Luke heard a story of some people dying after jumping in one of

the pools and Cody telling him that there is acid in them, he was scared to walk around thinking

he was going to fall in. They were very beautiful and the colors were amazing.

Whether we were out sightseeing or sitting at the cabin we stayed busy.

We played many games of Uno and something called Out of the Box and we also

did a 500 piece puzzle that I bought in Yellowstone, it was so disappointing once we

finished it and found that we were missing one piece.

We ate plenty of sweets, Huckleberry ice cream, smores and some fudge that was heavenly and

I don't even like fudge.

Here the boys are checking out their Geodes that they broke open to find the crystals inside.

All the rain made it really easy to collect worms to go fishing with.

Heath went running each morning and would come back to tell us that the roads

were just covered in them, so each of the kids collected them in a sandwich bag.

The joke for the week was, No Offense.

This is something that Cody started saying a few months ago and thinks

that he can say anything as long as he uses those words, so anyways

we had quite a few laughs with this.

So those were the highlights of our trip, so much fun

we are already hoping to go back again in a few years!