Yellow Rock, aka Yellowstone

I'm back! I know you were all eagerly awaiting my arrival. Here's the sad news: I didn't see a single bear. Or wolf! I'm pretty sure I heard coyotes during the night, and we saw a lot of bison/buffalo and several bald eagles...but no bear.

I forgot to pack Tyler's tennis shoes, so we stopped at Wal-mart (I gagged a little because I HATE that store), bought him the only choice we had (white), and they actually stayed pretty clean. It was fairly cold the first night, but we took about 80 gazillion blankets so we all stayed warm and when Alexis woke up in the morning she said, "I can't wait to go to bed tonight so I can sleep in my sleeping bag again". They are turning into quite the little campers. My parents brought along a kid sized shovel and Tyler went to town digging holes and throwing dirt in true boy fashion. And in typical Alexis fashion we made new friends with a family who was camping by the bathrooms. They had four little girls for Alexis to play with, and she was very sad to part with them.

On Wednesday (my birthday) we got up at 4:45 AM to try and see wildlife, but still no bears! We spent the rest of the day in a cloudy sleepy stupor and went to bed at 9 PM. I got more sleep all in a row that night (10 1/2 hours) than I probably have since before Alexis was born.

One of the days Tyler had a kool-aid mustache that could rival any kool-aid mustache ever.

We only took a few pictures with our camera, my dad took probably close to 200 with his, if not more than that. He emailed me a few today but I still need to get the rest from him. Here's a few from our camera:That's Yellowstone Lake in the background--beautiful!

Yellowstone was really pretty, but here's a question for you people that go every year. What do you do there?? We felt we'd seen everything worth seeing (especially with little kids) in the 3 days we were there. I suppose we could go back and hike all the trails and do everything more in depth, but I'm not sure I could go back annually.

Now, here's something that will knock your socks off. My dad takes some gorgeous pictures and if you aren't stunned by this picture than you probably need to adjust the colors on your monitor because they are awesome.

Photo by Steve Hegji

I believe this is Grand Prismatic Springs?? I stayed in the car for this one because Tyler was sleeping. Or had been until we pulled Alexis out of the car kicking and screaming--which woke him up. Did you know Alexis hates geysers and hydrothermal pools of any kind? Well, she does. And seeing as how that's the majority of what you stop and see in Yellowstone, you can imagine the fun she was.

We also saw Old Faithful, which isn't entirely predictable. We showed up a little before we thought it would go off, sat down and expected to wait half an hour or so. 4 minutes later it went off! Talk about lucky.

Photo by Steve Hegji

We are glad to be home , sleeping in our own beds, using toilets that are closer than 50 feet away, and taking daily showers. And though I'm thrilled that it's the end of June and I have yet to turn on my A/C, I am a little tired of the gloom and doom. Some sunshine, PLEASE!