Yellowstone

I bought waffles for the kids to have for breakfast and Gloria piled them high with whipped cream. I came down to Jane with her cup of cocoa, complete with little marshmallows from a big jar Gloria keeps for grandkids. 

It was hard to get the kids away from such a fun home, but we wanted to drive up and see Yellowstone. Our first stop was the side of the road to see some snow.

I got eaten by mosquitoes and panicked a little, but I sprayed us all down, killed the ones that got in the car, and thankfully ended up not seeing any the rest of the day.

We saw bison on the drive in, then found Old Faithful and went hiking around the area.

We saw lots of smaller geysers and springs.

I made someone hold Jane's hand at all times because the smaller boardwalks next to boiling water made me nervous.

We read the displays and learned all about what we were seeing.

Then we went back for the next big eruption.

Right on time, as predicted.

We got out of the misty rain for a bit and toured inside the museum.

Then we went to Silex spring 

and the paint pots

which were very smelly.

It was super misty and Jane got some beachy waves.

Our last stop was the grand prismatic spring.

We walked across a bridge and around the boardwalks.

It was really beautiful in person, but the rain started coming down in earnest.

We were SO glad we weren't camping as originally planned.

As we left, the weather cleared up and we saw a big bear down by the trees.

We only saw a fraction of the park, but everything we saw was amazing. We'd love to come back and explore the other areas.

On the way back we stopped in Jackson Hole at Hand Fire pizza for dinner, which was phenomenal. We made it back to the house where Rick and Jess had arrived.