After Colorado Springs and Teton National Park, we drove the hour north to Yellowstone. The girls immediately smelled the sulfur and learned all about the different kinds of hot springs and geysers. The area is such a contrast from the Tetons with all the different colored waters and landscape. We were lucky enough to have part of the Izu and Hadfield families join us for this part of the adventure.
West Thumb
Jane found a frog at our campground at Bridge Bay. We also woke up to an elk eating our neighbors chair in the morning!
The girls are playing in the black sand off of Yellowstone Lake.
Jane got to celebrate her 6th birthday waking up in a tent! Her one request: Old Faithful
We decided to put up tents while in Yellowstone because we were jumping from campsite to campsite each night. The pop-up trailer is a little more time consuming than our trusty tent.
This is Grand Geyser.
Old Faithful
Birthday ice cream for all the littles.
The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.
Funny story. I wanted to paddleboard in Yellowstone, but the only river you can is between Lewis Lake and Shoshone Lake (roughly 10 miles). I told Bryan we would never be able to do that with all the little kids. Boy did that cause him to really, really make it happen. So we did it and here is the proof!
Fire River with a rainbow.
By day 3, the girls were pretty sick of seeing geysers and hot springs. So we left the kids in the car and caught this beautiful rainbow amongst the thermal features.
Mammoth Hot Springs
It took us about 6 hours from the northern most part of Yellowstone to drive to our next campsite near Glacier National Park. Unfortunately, it is very difficult to get camping reservations in the park. I looked 6 months in advanced!
I think we should have done a little more research on Glacier National Park. I thought one of our activities would be to drive the "Going to the Sun" road. This is actually the only road in the park and it will lead you from the west side to the east side. It takes more than 2 hours to drive the whole road and the parking is very limited and the roads are so thin.
But the views were magnificent!
Once we found a parking spot, we hiked to Hidden Lake.
We saw mountain goats and touched glaciers.
We hiked St. Mary's trail
and some of us jumped into the freezing water!
Our family took a whitewater rafting trip Flathead River. We had so much fun!
Of course, the kids enjoyed the campground filled with games and water and free breakfasts in the morning!
It was so much fun to hang out with family on vacation. Beautiful scenery, lots of laughing and playing, and enough food for all thanks to Rachel and Becky's pantry and preparation!
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