Summer Vacation (part 1...of many)

We left for Utah on July 17th.  We met my parents in Yellowstone for a weekend of fun.  Ben brought the boys (Lisa had to work, poor thing) and my parents had Heather's girls with them.  We had a great time.  The kids were awesome in the car.  We spent the first night in Bismarck, North Dakota.  The second day felt like a ton of driving, but we eventually made it to Yellowstone and saw some amazing  things along the way.

Painted Canyon in North Dakota

At a rest area on the Montana/North Dakota border.

Huge piece of petrified wood at the rest area.

We came into Yellowstone through Bear Tooth Pass.  It was quite the drive....

We came up that road you can see, the elevation change was amazing.

walking along the path.

Anyone care for a nice refreshing swim?  

We saw a black bear on our way into the park.

And then we saw another one.  

And a moose too!  In fact we saw more different kinds of animals on this trip to the park than any other before.  

Firehole Road Drive

Best of friends...immediately!  It was so cute to watch how fast the cousins picked up where they left off.  It made me wish (again) that we lived closer.  

Paint pots. 

BFFs forever.

Bison out in the geysers. 

I thought Myles might be bored at Yellowstone, but he loved it.  He loved seeing all of the water and was super content to ride around in the stroller.  

Waiting for old faithful to go off.

Finally!!

All the kids at old faithful 

Playing in fire hole river.

The kids made that circle of rocks out in the middle of the river.

Even Myles got in on the fun.

And I put my feet in too!

On the morning of the second day, at our first stop I had these two adorable boys with me.... As I got them out of the car I told them they needed to hold hands, which they did.  

All the way down the trail.  How cute are they?!

We saw this big guy along the road.

Well Myles didn't he was sleeping!

We took this hike by accident.  We wanted to see the falls so we started walking, when we got there we realized we could have driven up from the other parking lot to the one that was much closer.  Oh well we had a good time on the hike.

After seeing the falls from the viewing area, these 5 convinced Grandpa to take them on another hike down to a closer spot to see the falls.  The rest of us waited for Jake and Ben to walk down and get the cars instead of all of us walking back to them. It was a long hike and a little hard but they said it was a good one too.  

Then we went to Mammoth and saw these elk and went to the arch for some pictures.

Man we had bad timing the sun was in everyone's eyes but we tried.

On our way back to out hotel we saw two HUGE elk

The next day was our last and we only spent a few hours in the park.  The first thing we did was finish up the junior ranger program and the kids earned their patches. We also spilt from the others and came home through the Tetons.

Here they are taking "the junior ranger oath"

With their patches.

West Thumb

Ashton photo bombed me!

We had a great start to our vacation in Yellowstone.