Our Summer Vacation 2013 (Day 4)

Monday morning we headed to Yellowstone.

We decided to do the north loop that day so we entered from West Yellowstone and headed north.

Since Ben doesn't love being in his stroller while everyone else is free we chose our stops carefully and kept a fast pace so he didn't have time to complain.

It worked for the most part :)

 Gibbon Falls

 

Artists Paintpots

{My favorite feature of the park}

Josh is lovingly trying to get Matt to turn around for the picture :)

Mammoth Hot Springs

It was late in the afternoon and we hadn't had lunch yet so we pushed on through to Mammoth and ate lunch in the car.

The gift shop we had parked at had ice cream so I took the kids in after we were done eating while Andy tried to finish feeding a slow eating Ben.

Then we went up to the hot springs...

Ben had to jump over every crack in the boardwalk...we decided to skip the stroller with all of the stairs on this one.

 

It was drizzling on us here at Mammoth...so pleasant.  Almost as soon as we hopped in the car it started pounding rain.

Beauty, Bears and Buffalo

Rain drenched landscapes are the most beautiful to me...

We had been told by more than one person that we would most likely see bears.

We did...4 of them.

We only got pictures of two.

One of the ones we didn't get to snap was too far out in a field and the other one was 15 feet away on the side of the road as we whizzed by with another car on our tail.

Here's a blurry picture of the one black bear.

Tower Falls: Andy was the only one that got out at this spot since it was pouring rain again.  He ran up the trail took a pic and ran back.

Here's one of the three grizzlies that we saw.  He would never bring his head up for a picture.

We were driving around trying to find a particular spot and ended up in a campground area.

As we were ready to turn around I saw this out the window...

Ben growled like a bear when he saw it :)

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

I loved the big green meadow on top of this mountain.

I'm not sure if this was Upper or Lower Falls

Andy was intrigued by the trees he saw growing out of rock.

He said they symbolized endurance and strength to him and had me take pictures :)

Notice the geysers in the distance underneath the sun.

We usually didn't stop for Elk since we see those often enough but sometimes we were forced to since everyone else in front of us were stopped on the road.

LOVED the sunset.  Of course the picture doesn't do it justice.

I remember my dad always calling Yellowstone Jellystone when we were young so even though it was late when we got in we cued up the iPad and played a few clips of the old Yogi Bear for the kids.