Even with Covid taking away a lot of our normal happenings these past few months we decided we still wanted a family trip this summer so we chose to go to Yellowstone. We packed up Wednesday night and left early Thursday morning. We rolled into our campsite around lunch time. Since 3/4 of the Yellowstone campsites are closed and everything there was booked we opted to camp just outside of Yellowstone at a KOA campsite. It was fairly nice and had a lot of amenities, the only downside was it was colder than expected and we were next to the highway so we listened to traffic all night. We set up camp, ate lunch, then headed into Yellowstone. That first day we headed north. Our main stops were at Monument Geyser basin, Norris Geyser basin, Sheepeater cliff, and Mammoth hot springs. The kids got their lesson in "stink pots" and all things geological about Yellowstone. They enjoyed the cool colors of all of the different spots and the fact that we saw a small herd of Elk at dinner. We rolled into camp late and went right to bed that evening.
Friday we started our day at the Grizzly and Wolf discovery center in West Yellowstone. We spent some time there seeing all the animals (bears, wolves, otters, and birds of prey). Alice and Peter loved the bears, Kendal enjoyed the wolves, and Casey's favorite was the otters. Afterwards we headed into the park. We went south and our main spots we saw were the Lower Geyser basin, Fountain paint pots, Great Fountain geyser, Firehole lake drive, Midway geyser basin, Upper Geyser basin, Old Faithful, Kepler cascades, and the West Thumb geyser basin. The kids all loved old Faithful, Casey and I liked the Firehole lake drive. This day was full of the Geysers and Mud pots. It's the "main route" people take in Yellowstone so it was very busy and harder to find parking and often lots of people around. We filled our day at the park and went back to camp late that night.
Saturday we packed up camp and headed into the park. It was a long line to get in, but we made it nonetheless. We knew we wanted to hit the Falls on the East side of the park and find some animals so that's the direction we went. We saw Virginia cascade, Upper canyon falls, and lower canyon falls before lunch. During lunch Casey went into a field to see a buffalo. Little did he know another buffalo would come up almost right behind him. He turned to see a huge buffalo coming his way. Luckily the buffalo was just looking to lie down and there were some tree's separating Casey and the Buffalo. (crazy close, but so cool!!) Kendal and I spotted a dear while the boys were wowing over the buffalo. After lunch we drove along the Yellowstone river we found a ton of Buffalo hanging out and the kids had a field day watching them all around the car, crossing the road, and roaming the hills. Alice was thrilled to see the baby buffalo and Peter and Kendal were laughing because the buffalo stopped in the road - backing up traffic. Casey also spotted an Elk on our drive. We passed Sulphur Caldron, Mud volcano, and the Lake. The kids wanted to end the day watching old faithful again so we got them some ice cream and waited around for the eruption. The kids were a bit done with the long walks by Saturday so we kept it simple. After the park we got a late dinner and headed home. The car was being iffy so it was a slow and long drive, but we made it home. Dirty, but full of great memories.
(Princesses tucked in and safe ; )
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