Weatherholtz Family: Yellowstone

Disclaimer: get ready for some pictures. I had to sort through almost 400 pictures from this one day!

It is amazing what a good night's sleep can do. Yesterday I was ready to throw my children in a geyser. Today I am ready to discover Yellowstone with my babies. We also started with a family prayer granting us kindness, patience, and respect.

We had no official plan as to how to tackle Yellowstone. It is HUGE. As all best laid plans should go, we started at Starbucks. I have discovered how much I love lattes. Crazy thing is we ran into a couple that we had talked to while in Jackson. They are traveling from Pennsylvania with their two teenaged boys.

The roads in Yellowstone form a large figure 8. We decided to drive the lower eight heading towards Old Faithful and see how far we could get.

Our first stop was the West Thumb Geyser Basin. We had seen this from afar as we drove in. The little bit of steam we saw from a distance totally awed us. “Is that really coming from the ground?” This was our first time seeing any hydrothermal features and there is truly nothing like it. You are walking along a path surrounded by pools of BOILING water. These pool are beautiful. We walked the ½ mile loop and all really enjoyed this stop.

Lakeshore Geyser

Fishing Cone

Big Cone

Abyss Pool

Lily read all the signs along the way and would "teach" Sarah Ellen.

There are four types of hydrothermal features: geysers, hot springs, mud pots, and fumaroles. As you are walking along these boardwalks, you can look down and see a small steaming hole, a pit of boiling mud, a beautiful aqua blue pool, or a spouting geyser.

Our next stop was to see Old Faithful. Of course, we arrived right after an eruption had occurred so we had about an hour and a half before the next eruption. We walked about a two-mile loop around the Upper Geyser Basin looking at other geysers and pools in this area. This area had 5 predictable geysers.

This was one was called Castle. It had just erupted and it was steaming loudly as we went by.

Daddy gets a good workout on some of these hikes.

We made it back with a few minutes to spare to watch Old Faithful.

Our next stop was Biscuit Basin. We were hungry and wanting a good picnic spot. Thankfully as we drove in, there was a perfect spot by the river. We could not have planned this any better.

This cutie joined us for lunch. He even perched on James's shoe at one point.

After we ate, we talked briefly with an older couple that lived not far away in Idaho. As we were talking, a dragonfly landed on the man’s arm. The girls touched it and watched it for a minute. As the dragonfly took off, we all watched in amazement as a bird scooped down and grabbed him in the air. James chased the bird down and took pictures of him enjoying his lunch.

Feeling recharged, we walked the ½ mile loop around Biscuit Basin to see more spectacular geysers and pools. We let the girls take turns with the camera for this loop.

Sapphire Pool

Lily had the camera for the first half and she got many a shoot of poop. Why are children so fascinated with poop? Although, I do have to wonder what animal is wandering around all these crazy pools of steaming/boiling water.

Jewel geyser

Shell Spring

As we were walking, the Jewel geyser erupted. This phenomena completely boggles my mind. Yellowstone is constantly changing. Some geysers become inactive while others emerge. They can move, change shape, or basically explode at any time. Yes, a little disconcerting.

Mustard Spring

Black Pearl Geyser

As we were driving to our next stop, we saw our first bison of the day. We learned that a bison is the largest land mammal in North America. This dude was pretty darn big!

Next stop was the Midway Geyser Basin.

Steaming hot waterfalls dumping into this river.

We were all getting a little worn out so we skipped the Lower Geyser Basin. Sure hope we didn’t miss out on anything, but the mind (and 7 and 9 year old bodies) can only take in so much in one day.

We drove the Firehole Canyon Drive and stopped to take a peek at the Firehole falls. The girls opted to stay in the car and finish their game of Blokus.

We made another stop to see the Gibbon Falls. We skipped a few more lookouts along the way. We stopped briefly at Norris Geyser Basin. All the loops were over a mile and it was pretty chilly in this spot. As much as we wanted to see this area too, we just didn’t have it in us. We did stop a bit in the museum. The had some great displays and descriptions of the various hydrothermal areas we had been viewing all day.

Next stop was Canyon Village for dinner. We ate at the diner and finished off our meal with ice cream. We sat next to a family from Wisconsin and enjoyed sharing travel adventures.

Next we drove the south rim of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone to Artist Point (thank you, Chip). Holy moly the view was stunning. Giant falls in the distance and a stunning canyon. We discovered a few hikes that take you down into the canyon and at the base of the falls. We quickly decided we would be doing that in the morning.

Lily was begging to hike up in the woods to Lily Pad Lake. I was a little spent and honestly not too excited about hiking in the woods at dusk. We agreed to go a little ways up. It was peaceful back in the woods. It was a little hard to enjoy though as every twig I heard snap, I thought was a grizzly bear coming to eat my children. Little Buggy was struggling with the hike a bit too. After all, her “legs are much shorter than ours.” We made it to another great overlook of the canyon and decided to head back. Meanwhile, Lily is encouraging me telling me not to worry about bears. How awesome is that!

As we were making our way back, some ding dong (in our family that is over six feet tall and named James) decided to throw a rock up the path to land right beside Sarah Ellen. She screamed, I screamed, Lily screamed. Sarah Ellen immediately burst into tears. Lily became upset and was ready to run out of the forest. Since we were all on edge to begin with, this just sent us right over. Way to go, Daddy! I'm pretty sure that after all that drama, he learned his lesson.

After that excitement, we headed back to the car to make our way back to our cabin. We have been talking much of the trip how we haven’t seen too much wildlife. We just haven’t been out at the right time. The animals really come out at dusk in Yellowstone. Driving out, we ran into this guy just munching some grass on the side of the road.

Then up the road a bit traffic was stopped. Not because of an animal on the side of the road, but because of one in the middle of the road. Check out this guy just moseying on down the bridge.