Yellowstone

We spent 3 days exploring Yellowstone National Park.
We found more snow. It was pretty deep in places still - about 3 -6 feet in shady spots. There is still lots of evidence of the wild fires from the eighties. So much of the park is scarred still. But it has it's own beauty anyway.

We threw rocks in Yellowstone Lake. (I think that this was the kids' favorite activity of the entire vacation. It was also the only activity that the kids requested to do more than once.)

We saw lots of geysers and and hot springs. This is the Grand Prismatic Spring. It was my favorite.

Of course, all the geo thermal activity is a little smelly. The kids found all sorts of ways to plug their noses. Isaac wished for a clothespin.

Hazel complained about the smell too. But she was a trooper hiker.

I was amazed to realize that the water just under the surface is boiling and it just kills all the vegetation. But the starkness of the contrast is pretty cool. The white ground and trees have been boiled.
Sometimes the springs are as acidic as battery acid!

There were lots of cool rock formations:

Mammoth Hot Springs

We saw lots of animal life:

We saw a grey wolf walking along the river,

Lots of elk and a pronghorn.

This nest belongs to a bald eagle. We saw it in the nest but missed getting the picture.

We saw 4 different black bears.
We saw lots of bison.

This herd decided to cross the road while we were trying to get by. Most of the herd stopped in the middle of the road so that cars couldn't get by. We were stopped for about 45 minutes.

Glad that I wasn't stuck so far back.

We found more snow to play in. Isaac was trying to melt it with his huge magnifying glass.

We watched Old Faithful go off. Luckily we got there only a few minutes before it went off, so we didn't have to wait too long.

We could have stayed a week more. There is so much more to see. We'll have to go back. We were ready to go to Jake and Amy's though. The kids needed some down time. But we really enjoyed our visit.