Yellowstone day 2

I am soooo tired!!!  We had a super busy day so I know I will forget something.  Going to mostly rely on the pictures for this post.  We did the whole upper loop of today.  We stopped by the Mammoth hot springs terraces, this was high on my list of things to see.  David was driving along, I was looking at a map then David hits the breaks and yells..."BEAR".  It was just walking across the road.  After it crossed the road and was down the hill I jumped out and snapped a few pictures :)  Then we drove a little farther and we saw a mother bear and her cub!!!  Bears...another thing high on my list of things to see.  The other thing on my list is a moose.  We also saw the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.  It was beautiful but turned out to be very difficult to photograph.  The rocks kind of blended together and you couldn't really see it was a canyon.  I did get a few pictures though. 

 

 Mammoth Hot Spring Terraces....so beautiful.

 

 Liberty Cap...a dormant hot spring.

 

 Fire damage.

 

 Falls in the canyon.

 

I spent today in my happy place :)

Yellowstone.  That word has so much meaning for me.  It is really hard to describe the feeling I have when I am here.  I really have this feeling at most of the National Parks we visit but this one is special.  It is my happy place...that is the only way I can describe it. 

 

We only had to drive 2 hours from Idaho this morning to get here.  We drove into the park and visited the Junior Ranger station.  The boys already have the badge from here but we found out about a different thing they can do called Junior Scientist.  We talked to the Rangers there for a long time then we had a picnic lunch.  On the way our we found a much better place for a picnic by they river...oh well, maybe tomorrow ;)  Then we went do to the Old Faithful area to get the Junior scientist books.  Then we listened to a Ranger talk and saw Old Faithful erupt.  We visited a gift shop but it is so crowded here today, I am hoping most people go home after the holiday.  I will just have to get our souvenirs another day.  We took the Firehole Canyon Drive and saw the waterfall.  We also so the place where you can swim in the river.  It was also crowded so we will hopefully get back to that.  We also took the Firehole Lake Drive.  We hadn't been to either of these places the last time we were here.  There were lots of very cool things on this drive.  The lake was beautiful, there was also several dome geysers and a very awesome hot spring.

 

We came back to West Yellowstone Montana to check into our hotel.  We walked to a pizza place fro dinner from here.  I am washing a load of laundry and we are winding down for the night.  Looking forward to a most awesome day tomorrow!!!

 

 Old Faithful

 

 We took a picture just like this when we were here 4 years ago.

 Teddy Roosevelt Bear

 Firehole Spring...This one bubbled, I haven't seen one do that before!!

 Surprize Pool....It is black because it is hotter than boiling.

 

 Grand Fountain Geyser....we didn't get to see this one erupt.

 

 White Dome Geyser...we got lucky and got to see this one erupt!

 

 Firehole Lake

Today we walked on lava beds in Idaho!!!

 

I didn't blog yesterday because we really didn't do anything except drive.  And it wasn't a very long drive.  We had time to just relax a bit.  We went to Dairy Queen for ice cream then Jacob and Michael went swimming.  It would have been nice if the hotel had a laundry room but they didn't so I got to relax a bit too :) 

 

Today we drove to Craters of the Moon National Monument.  The boys got the Junior Ranger books and we hung out at the visitors center while they worked on them.  We were afraid the visitor center would close before we could get back if we went into the park so we got the badges before we actually saw the park.  This place was used by NASA to train some of the astronauts who went to the moon.  If you take away all the trees and shrubs it would look a lot like the moon!!  There we lots of twisted, gnarly trees....that made me happy.  But the light was against me, and it was a little bit hazy.   I am not very happy with my pictures.  I am posting them anyway because we most likely will never be there again.  

 Dwarf Buckwheat

 

 In the Devils Garden

 

 If you look close at the branches on the tree you can see an example of "Witches Broom."  It is caused by Dwarf Mistletoe. 

 Going down into one of the "caves"....or lava tubes.

 

 Michael climbing up out of the 'cave'