6 days in Yellowstone

We just got back from 6 relaxing days in Yellowstone! It was tons of fun for all of us. This is actually the first vacation that I walked away from thinking Logan actually had fun during it. The weather was perfect (in the 70's the whole time), and we got a lot of hiking done!

One of Logan's favorite parts of the vacations was seeing all the animals. We had to get an extra park map so he could look at the pictures of all the animals in the park while we drove (I would pull out the map to give Dave directions, and Logan would pull out his animals). We saw buffalo, elk, sheep, a wolf, a pronghorn, lots of deer, a marmot, lots of pikas, swans, green winged teals, and lesser scaups.

He loved the buffalo, and that we were constantly able to see them out the window of the car. If we got desperate on a drive we would ask him to look for them out the window and he would look out the window and call "Buffalo, where are you?" until we found one.

We also enjoyed pointing out the different colors of water (caused by the different bacteria cultivated in the hot water). Every pool he would point the the water and tell us what color it was. He also loved the mud pots (bubbling mud). Every time we hiked up to one of those he would exclaim "Mud, (color of the mud), messy!" He was quite impressed the mud was aloud to be bubbling and such a mess.

Our biggest set back at the park was the steam. Logan was terrified every time steam blew in our direction. Since this happeded a lot we went from being happy about the colors, bubbles, etc, to in tears because the "Stinky water! Hot, NO!!!" But we survived and I'm sure he's stronger for it!

It was definitely a daddy's week, so this is the only great picture we got of Logan and I. He just wanted to follow Dave around the whole time. Which is a nice break for mom.

We saw some beautiful waterfalls while we were there too. They reminded me of Glacier a little. Very majestic and beautiful.

 My fave of the waterfalls was the Lower Falls, although it was quite a hike up and down stairs to get to it. Logan wanted to do it himself, which is probably part of the intensity.

The upper falls were pretty too, but not as exciting as the lower. Although substantially easier to get to!

Whenever there was a big bolder on the trail, Logan insisted on climbing up it with Dave. They had so much fun climbing "The big one!!!" and the small ones too.

More impressive to me than Old Faithful was the Grand Prismatic. It had pretty much all the colors of the rainbow in it! It was hard to get pictures up close, but when we hiked up to Ferry Falls (a really easy hike), we were able to take an off shoot trail and get a few fabulous pictures from above!

We spent the first three nights in a cabin/lodge (yes, the pregnant lady insisted on beds and showers for most of the trip), but we spent the last two nights camping (to give Dave his fix for the summer). Logan had the time of his life exploring our camp site!

hiding

PEAK-E-BOO!

Behind our fire pit was a cluster of scrawny pine trees, and he would spend hours "hiding" from us in them. Eventually he would pop his head out of one side of the tree (and his leg would pop out of the other side) and yell "PEAK-E-BOO!" and we had to act surprised. He would laugh and do it again and again.

We also loved roasting Smores over the fire! The fire brought us so much joy that if a neighbor had a fire going and we didn't, he would want to go visit them and enjoy their fire. We had great neighbors, so they didn't mind the little visitor.

Logan also loved the pikas running around the camp site (think big chipmunks with long tails). Whenever he would see them he would yell at them "HI, HI!" and chase them down. He learned they come closer if you feed them cheerios... not that we encouraged that or anything.

Over all it was a great trip filled with so much hiking and fun! We're glad to be home, but we had a great time.