The Wonder of Yellow Stone

We stayed in the town of Bozeman Mt. It was about an hour and a half away from Yellowstone National park. We went to Yellowstone and saw Old Faithful.

Several of the roads were closed so it made our drive even longer , but it was totally worth it. It was quite the site seeing  the herds of wild  buffalo. One of them even crossed the road right in front of our car taking his own sweet time .

We also were lucky to see Elk .  Each herd of elk has one buck and we were about 30 feet away from him. The buck almost rammed his antlers into a car.  We were told by an overly talkative park ranger  that the day before he did ram into a car.

Colorful hotspring bubbling hot

Hot springs

Old Faithful

The Hot springs were unreal. We could not believe how the steam and bubbles rose from the earth.  The air surrounding the hot spring was so warm. It felt like you had just stepped out of a long hot shower into a room full of mist. All the while mixed with the cool breeze that would mysteriously swoop and swirl the steam around you, sending a shiver down your spin, both from the shift in temperature and the wonderment and grandeur surrounding you.  The water in the hot springs was a vibrant turquoise.

Shelby embracing the mist

When we arrived at old faithful we had just missed the eruption by a couple minutes, so we had to wait an hour and a half  for the last one during daylight. So we got to enjoy the gift shop and the kids picked out their post cards and key chains. We also got some super yummy ice cream . They had huckleberry which was delicious.

We waited excitedly for the eruption and Old Faithful did not disappoint . We couldn’t help but ooh and awe as we watched its natural power hurl water dramatically into the sky.

Standing in front of Old Faithful

Dinner in a "Covered Wagon"
Yellow Stone

After we left Old Faithful we were all super tired and equally hungry so we stopped into the most fun bbq dinner house. Each table had a covered wagon canopy above it. Ally ordered a buffalo hamburger . All the food was perfect.

The town of Bozeman was pretty populated and had a decent downtown with coffee shops and a fun local book store. The kids and I spent about an hour at the book store. Each kid picked out a book to read for the long trek to South Dakota.

Tori with her volcano eruption. 

That week we happened to be studying volcanoes with the kids and we did several fun explosion experiments. Perfect that it lined up with our visit to Yellowstone.

The 3 amigos and their marshmallow structures they made . We put them on jello to see if they could withstand an "earthquake" 

We also went on a hike to the Buffalo Jump state park where native americans used to run hundreds of buffalo off a huge cliff so they could use them as food and clothing. It was a steep climb all surrounded by the barrenness of the land . Easy to imagine the stampeding buffalo being chased off the cliff  that we looked over when we finally reached the top.

Onward --- to --South Dakota