Our first full day in Yellowstone we woke up early, packed our lunches, and headed into the park for a full day. Since we went in the night before to see Old Faithful we decided to take the counter clockwise loop that was recommended. The weather was on the cool side and a thunderstorm was in the forecast so we were hoping to see lots of wildlife.
We stopped at a pretty water fall first and then off to our first geyser of the day. It didn't take Gannon long to figure out he didn't care to see another geyser on the trip, "they smell disgusting!" As you can see in one of the pictures he is pulling his sweatshirt over his face to block the steam. At Mammoth Hot Springs Garrett was excited to take a nature walk while Gannon and Daddy went to view the gift shop.
As we left Mammoth the only wildlife we had see was a chipmunk and tons of squirrels, not my idea off Yellowstone wildlife, I wanted to see some big animals! Wasn't too long after this on our drive that we reached a parking lot full of people looking and watching something with a ranger guarding....a black bear and her cubs! I was SUPER excited to jump out of the truck, walk up the trail to see from a better spot, which I couldn't see from. The ranger was getting quite upset with the crowd trying to take pictures. He quickly told us to get in our vehicles and leave NOW! Dang it we were blocked by cars behind us for quite some time so we go to watch the bears as they walked around. It was so cool.
After that we proceeded to see 17 bison, 8 elk, 1 coyote, and deer and her babies, and the little chipmunks and squirrels. It was a great day for wildlife viewing.
On one of our "nature walks" Garrett and I saw a bison laying between two geysers close enough to get a great picture, but I forgot to take the camera. When we got back down I told Dave to go back with Garrett and take a picture. On their way up the crowd was watching the same bison and heard something breaking branches, I guess another huge bison came out of the woods right past all the people to head down the path! People screaming and freaking out everywhere!!! Thanks Dave for staying calm and getting great pictures!
It rained really hard from about 1:30 to 4:30 so we continued to drive on the loop until we ended up around Old Faithful, but because of the rain and a couple of grouchy kids we kept driving.
The next day we headed back to watch Old Faithful one more time and to see the Midway Geyser. We figured since we were 30 minutes from OF if would be a quick trip. Well wouldn't you know we were about a mile from the entrance and a car three cars in front of us swerved into a ditch to avoid hitting the car in front of them. Dave hit the Onstar button and jumped out to help. Thank goodness for Onstar because most of the park does not have cellphone service. About 45 minutes we were back on the road.
Gannon and Garrett love Old Faithful, but any other geyser that they can get closer to may be beautiful, but surely stinks. I figured the umbrellas would be a good shield from the steam and it worked pretty good. The finally picture on this spot about sums up Gannon's thoughts of Yellowstone!
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