The Roundy Adventurers: Yellowstone

Athena at our backyard campout when they boys were gone at Father and Son campout.

Sunday we drove to Buffalo WY and stayed in a hotel. The pool was outdoors and had to be cleaned. And it was not hot outside. But other than that pool was great.

I cleaned the bugs out of the pool while everyone else swam.

We had a great time playing, eating fast food, watching movies and sleeping at the hotel.

Monday we drove to Yellowstone. We met up with Kelly and Denise, Jon & Emily and their kids. We stopped at the Paint Pots first.

Then we went over to Old Faithful. At that point our little family was lost from the rest of the group. So I sat with our kids while Sterling went to find the group.

Love Old Faithful!

We picnicked for dinner near Old Faithful. The cousins had a great time playing together. They found these cut trees that someone had placed on other trees to create see saws. A little dangerous. Dirty as they fell off. But a great time none the less.

That night our little family camped in a tent. The rest of the group had cabins. They had planned this trip for about a year. The funny thing is that Jon invited us to join them…a year ago. We decided then we couldn’t commit. But as the date approached Ster asked for the time off and we went!

The kids were so excited to camp out in a tent. Athena especially.

We had packed for freezing nights and hot days. It turned out the night’s were not really cold and the days were not hot!

We had some rain that first night but it was a great night. We did worry about bears a bit…or atleast I did. The campsite had been visiting by a bear the night before we arrived. That made me very scared to venture the short distance to the restroom in the middle of the night. (We were camped right by the restrooms)

Tuesday morning we met up for a hike. The morning was sunny but a little chilly.

We started our hike up the mountain hoping to reach the geyser when it blows (not knowing the time it would). At first it was a fun hike. A bridge to cross and a river to follow. SO beautiful!

However, the weather turned. As we hiked we noticed it was going to rain. A storm was heading, hopefully, not our way. We hiked on.

It didn’t just start to rain like we thought…it hailed. And the hail grew large really fast.

We ran off the trail and hid under the trees, covering the children’s bodies with the adults’ arms and heads.

When that turned into rain we gave up. We headed back down the mountain. We were cold and wet but we survived.

We drove to a visitor center where we found a fire to warm up by.

Sterling went out to the van and cooked hot dogs for lunch. We all ate lunch together at our vehicles. Hot dogs, pasta salad, chips, fruit.

The weather was nice for lunch so we headed to West Thumb. As soon as we arrive there the bad weather rolled in again. Another storm!

This time we decided to wait it out in our vehicles. Sterling moved things around in our van to create a party place and he invited the cousins to join us.

The kids played UNO and Athena read books. Luke put up flashing red and blue lights Ster had given the kids recently. We had kid music on too. It was fun.

The storm did pass and we were able to go on that walk at West Thumb.

The sky was grey and dreary but we still had a great time.

We all went to our campsite for dinner and smores. However, when dinner had ended another storm rolled in. We sat in our vehicles and waited 30 minutes to see if it would pass. It did, thankfully.

We made a camp fire and had dessert.

The next morning Sterling and I took down camp and cleaned up. We loaded the van for the drive back to Buffalo to the same hotel. But first we met up with our group for a walk around Pelican Creek.

It was a beautiful walk!! Had a little bit of a mosquito problem but not too bad. We stopped at the beach where the cousins enjoyed tossing all sorts of things into the water. The waves immediately brought them all back to shore. The water was freezing and the weather kind of cold so nobody actually played in the creek.

Next we drove to see the Rapids. Crazy rushing water.

Lastly, the Mud Volcanos. It turned out the Dragon’s Mouth (on the Mud Volcano walk) was way more entertaining than the mud volcanoes themselves.

The Dragon’s Mouth was amazing. It sounded like and looked like there must be a dragon in that cave!!!

We saw a bison pretty close up…it had roamed near (but not too near) the human traffic on the walkway.

We said our goodbyes to our cousins, grandparents/parents/etc. What a fabulous trip!

As we drove to Yellowstone on our way out we finally saw bears! Okay, they were really far away and I only got a short view as we drove past. Luke and Ster had left the van to try and get pictures of the bears (2 bears). Luke didn’t see them…they were tricky to find in the trees from such a distance. Athena was sleeping in the van but she had been determined we stop at a waterfall. So we planned to see a small one on the drive out. Since she was sleeping we decided we still had to stop and wake her. Even though she wouldn’t enjoy it because she would be groggy and grouchy, she would have been so disappointed if we didn’t stop and wake her.