Yellowstone Day 1

Our first day in Yellowstone was beautiful! We entered the park and drove to Old Faithful to meet up with the cousins! It was a pretty & slightly foggy drive, with the sun breaking through more every minute. We saw a pronghorn in a field, but made no stops so that we could be on time to Old Faithful to find the cousins.

We met them a few minutes before 9:00 and there was much hugging and many smiles! We went into the Old Faithful Inn for a bit before settling down on the benches to wait for Old Faithful to erupt.

Then we took a walk on the boardwalks around the Old Faithful geyser basin and saw lots of cool thermal features and spent lots of time chatting and goofing around with family.

Yes, it really is that blue. I just want to swim in there, except that I listened to the Rangers and I know that I would be burned by both the heat and the bacteria living in there.

Sweet nieces.

I love that picture of the youngest from each family. They were so sweet together!

No trip to the Old Faithful Inn is complete without ice cream!

After Old Faithful we headed to the Midway Geyser Basin to see the Grand Prismatic. I had never heard of the Grand Prismatic, and since we have been home, we have found out that a lot of people have never heard of the Grand Prismatic. This is only strange because the Grand Prismatic is the largest and most photographed thermal feature in Yellowstone! It’s incredible! Now I wasn’t super excited personally to go to the Midway Geyser Basin because thermal features get kind of boring to me after a while and there are A LOT of thermal features in Yellowstone! But the Grand Prismatic is a class all its own. Amazing! (Dee, make sure John see these pictures…apparently he has never heard of the Grand Prismatic either!)

On the way to the boardwalk to see Grand Prismatic.

This shot reminds me of the opening of Little House on the Prairie…just need some pioneer dresses & bonnets.

And now…the pictures of The Grand Prismatic!

No joke. No editing on these pictures.

It’s huge! The pictures below were taken on my iPhone camera:

After walking around the Midway Geyser Basin (there are other thermal features there…I just don’t have pictures of them because they pale in comparison to the Grand Prismatic) we had our picnic lunch on this river bank.

After lunch we headed towards Fishing Bridge Campground where the cousins had their RV’s. The kids’ played for hours in their woods building a “cabin.”

Oh, and this bison crossed in front of us on the road. This was the closest we got to a bison. We actually did NOT see very many bison on this trip…or much wildlife at all, in fact.

An elk back in the trees…

That is the cabin they built! Apparently portions of the structure were already in place and the Ball kids finished the job!

Complete with a stone floor and fireplace!

Made by these two lovely peas in a pod!

Showing the adults what they had done…the dads had to check out its safety, of course.

In process…

Oldest and youngest sweeties.

After a delicious dinner made by my SIL, we headed back to our condo. It was about a 90 minute drive. There was some stopping for bison, but not much, which is just the way I like it!

Traveling to Yellowstone

I was very proud of my family on the morning of Saturday, August 2. I told them I wanted to leave at 4:00 a.m. because I wanted to arrive at the condo (12.5 hours of driving away) before dinner. Everyone was up and helped finish loading the van and climbed in with no complaints. We left at 4:15 a.m., which was actually 15 minutes before I REALLY wanted to leave. LOL! There was some sleeping during those early morning hours, and it was definitely quiet. We had a great morning of travel and made good time and I was excited about the possibility of unloading in the daylight and having time to swim and cook dinner at the condo!

We stopped for gas about an hour outside of Yellowstone. While we were pumping gas an ambulance and a police car went flying by. Soon after, we found out why…

We were stopped in a long line of vehicles due to what turned out to be a 4-vehicle, 12-person, very serious accident. And there we sat.

Sarah took pictures. We did some walking. We were about a 15 minute walk from the crash site. We tried to find a bathroom, without success. And, as you can see…there was no crouching behind a bush happening, either.

We watched one ambulance make several trips back & forth and also watched a medical helicopter land near the crash site and take off in the direction of Billings, we think.

While waiting 2.5 hours for the crash to be cleared was inconvenient and caused us to not reach our condo until well after dark and had us eating trail mix in the van for dinner, we were thankful that we had stopped for gas and hadn’t either witnessed or been involved in that accident.

We could walk around and take pictures and enjoy the beautiful surroundings. Montana is really stunning.

We talked to a few people here and there, but mostly the mood was solemn. Everyone knew once the helicopter came that it was a serious accident. We prayed for those people.

It wasn’t the way I had imagined our trip. But our 12 year old van with over 200K miles got us there with no problems and we had been spared any accidents. We were grateful and eager to meet up with the cousins the next morning and see Yellowstone!

Just a little post before we get to Yellowstone

Less than 6 days after I arrived home from Michigan, we headed out to meet the SoCal Ball’s in Yellowstone. I’m still working on editing those pictures, but during those 5 days I had a home, I did lots of laundry, shopping, and packing, and the girls did lots of playing with neighbors.

They are all ponies, pulling the princess in her carriage.

The girls & neighbor girls decided to sleep in the tent in the neighbor’s backyard. 3 of them made it all night, though they were quite tired the next day. But there is nothing better than that kind of summer memory.

We left for Yellowstone on August 2…next post will be our travel day!