Summing It All Up

Now that we've been home for two weeks, I thought I'd poll the family for their reviews of our vacation...

What was your favorite national park/monument/historic site?

M: Yellowstone National Park, because of all of the wildlife

R: Arches National Park, for the rock formations and hiking

J: It's too hard to pick!

Me: Yellowstone National Park, awesome thermal features and wildlife

Lost!

Looking back over my previous posts, I realized that I never told the story of getting lost in Yellowstone when I was little...

My family was checking out of Old Faithful Inn that morning, so my dad and my brother were taking some stuff out to the car to load up. I decided to follow them out, but was far enough behind that I didn't see which exit they took. I went out to the parking lot to look for them, but couldn't find them, so I went back up to our room. By this time, my mom had also left the hotel room, so no one was there.  

Signs

My collection of entrance signs, 20 National Park Service units visited in all...

June 19

What a Gas!

I thought it would be interesting to chronicle the price of gas across the country this summer...

Then & Now

I was talking with my mom today about our family vacation back in 1978, trying to piece together what we did then. Here are some pictures for your amusement. Compare and contrast, discuss amongst yourselves...

Our vehicle

1970 Buick Skylark (green)

2004 Honda Odyssey (silver)

Hey, Isn't This the Place...

So, today was the big pay-off for having the boys watch all of those movies (see my first-ever post). After breakfast at the "best hotel ever" (waffles & hot chocolate as usual for son #2), it took us about an hour to get to Devils Tower...

"Mom, isn't this where all of the dead cows and sheep are supposed to be?"

Go East, Young Man!

We had a lot of ground to cover today, so we loaded up and got ready to head out of the park after having breakfast at the diner. Our traveling buddies and her brother (our DC host last fall flew out for a few days to visit Yellowstone as well) were going to hike to the brink of the falls, before heading off on their own separate ways. We took the easier way and drove back to Artist Point to view the Lower Falls with the morning sun behind us.

Tatanka

We've seen a *LOT* of bison so far, but I'll never get tired of taking pics of them. Of all the wildlife, they're probably my favorite (even though the bears and wolves are rarer to spot = a more prized photo).

Saturday in the Park

Do you think the stagecoaches have been upgraded since 1978?

Originally we had reservations for a stagecoach tour out of Roosevelt Lodge today, but when we checked in on Wednesday, we found out that the activity had been cancelled due to poor trail conditions from all of the recent rain and melting snow. Bummer!

Hunting for Animals

This morning we got up early to do the hike out to Mystic Falls, which starts out in Biscuit Basin.

Sapphire Pool

Little Firehole River

Mystic Falls



Hot Stuff

I wasn’t with the boys yesterday the two times that they saw Old Faithful go off, so I was determined to catch it this morning. True to its name, within five minutes of the predicted time…

Thar' she blows!

Goodbye, Tetons! Hello, Yellowstone!

Both R and I woke up early this morning – he went to Oxbow Bend to catch the sunrise hitting the Tetons…


…and I went to the main lounge area of the lodge to use their wi-fi to upload pics and update the blog. Clearly, only one of us had any measure of success. For some reason, I couldn’t insert pictures into the body of the text, and it was taking forever to upload photos to Picasa. So frustrating!

Water, Rocks, & Snow

The nice thing about booking the early raft trip was that we still had nearly a whole day to continue exploring. So, we packed lunches and headed to String Lake for a picnic.

"Wild & Scenic" Raft Trip

I’m so thankful that we had another day of gorgeous weather – especially today, since we had reserved a float trip down the Snake River quite far in advance. I booked the 6:45AM trip for the views of the mountains in the early morning light and with the hope of glimpsing some wildlife along the river. All 4 kids were troopers about getting up so early, and were even quite chatty. Luckily the couple who had to share a raft with our two families didn’t seem to mind.

Les Trois Tetons

We had a beautiful morning driving up through Logan Canyon. The Logan River was running pretty fast – I think it was near flood stage, but I'm not sure if it has crested yet or not. When we came over the summit, we stopped at a rest area with a scenic overlook of Bear Lake.

Bear Lake