Summer Vacation

Our latest and greatest - a trip to Yellowstone.

We traveled with the whole Braithwaite gang and had such a great time.

We started out our 5 day adventure by traveling to Lava Hot Springs in Idaho. It's just what the name says. It's a city built around these hot springs and a river that runs through this tiny little town. We started out our day there by going to a swimming complex with a heated outdoor pool that had waterslides. I managed to not take any pictures but it was really cool. Windy, but cool.

After swimming there, we went to eat and then headed on over to the hot springs for some more swimming. I guess that's what you would call it. It consisted of about 5 or 6 different "springs" or pools that varied in degrees, ranging from hot to boiling hot. They were like giant hot tubs that came out of the ground. Very cool (not pun intended). The girls loved it and didn't want to get out.

Kenadie wasn't so sure about it at first but soon got use to it and loved it.

We stayed the night in the cutest little motel called the Alpaca Inn and yes, everything was decorated with Alpaca things, and no, there were no alpacas grazing around.

We left our beloved Alpaca Inn bright and early at 7:00 am (well that was the plan anway - I think we left at 7:30). We drove to West Yellowstone and entered Yellowstone here.

We were so excited to see wildlife we had never seen before and not too far into the park we spotted 2 buffalo quite a distance off. So of course, we had to pull over, get out the binoculars and study those things. Little did we know that we would see buffalo everywhere and soon they weren't so novel and we almost got bored of seeing buffalo. We were almost embarassed that we got so excited at seeing those first two.

On our first day in Yellowstone we had this big hike planned so as we're going along our way we come upon this little herd of buffalo RIGHT OFF THE SIDE OF THE TRAIL!!!!!! We soon realized that we were going to have to pass RIGHT BY THEM to go on our way. I was a little nervous because they passed out pamphlets and posted signs to be careful not to get too close to the buffalo because they could charge. I made sure my darling little girls were close by and that we walked past them without looking at them and without making a noise. It was nerve-racking I tell you! But we couldn't pass up the chance to get a picture of course.

I've learned to get use to that look on Dave's face. For some reason, that's what he always looks like when he gets his picture taken. Weird I know.

After our hike (which actually turned out to be a bust because we missed our turnoff), we headed down to the most famous of Yellowstone's attractions: Old Faithful. We had to wait a little while for it to erupt.

Kenadie stayed busy in the dirt

And well......this is Paityn waiting for it to happen. So excited!

And...ok....well.....my picture of Old Faithful didn't load like it was supposed to but you've seen pictures right? Good. On we go.

On our first day we also saw A LOT of hot springs and smelled A LOT of rotten egg smell from them to last us a lifetime I think. These hot springs were EVERYWHERE and they STUNK!!!!! They were pretty cool though.

Paityn thought this little mud spring was neat. It would bubble mud and squirt it all over. It reminded us of that "bog of eternal stench" in the movie "Labrynth".

This is one of the MANY pools we saw. Some of them were so pretty with very clear water and lots of pretty colors.

We ended that day by staying in West Yellowstone in a dive of a hotel. We were only there long enough to sleep though, thank goodness.

Our second day took us to some of the same kinds of things but also a few different things like "The Petrified Tree". It was kind of funny that they had this petrified tree that they put this big iron fence around. Not the most interesting thing we saw but we had fun with it.

"The Petrified Daughters"

This day consisted of a lot of driving. We did see a black bear WAY off in the distance and we thought we would see more animals but no such luck.

We stayed that night in Cooke City on the east side of Yellowstone. It felt like a mountain man village.

The next morning we left our hotel at 6:00. And yes, that's a.m. and yes, we are crazy. But when you live with a hunter you know that the animals come out in the early morning. So off we went on our animal spotting drive and saw hardly anything.

After being a little disappointed that we hadn't seen much, we did get a chance to see a Grizzly bear with her two cubs. Dave stuck the camera up to the binoculars and shot this picture. Not the greatest and he didn't get the cubs in the shot but it was soooooo cool. We ended up seeing 2 other black bears and 1 other grizzly bear. Seriously...it was so cool.

After seeing so many hot spings and geysers that weren't geysering (I know, that's not a real word), we were ready to see something different. We took a little hike and saw this.......

It was breathtaking and a little dizzying to be up that high and look down to where the water was crashing below us!

While viewing this we noticed there were stairs climbing up the other side of the mountain and there were people on them. We decided to make our way over to it. We drove a little ways down the mountain, found the place where you started and then went down 385 stairs to where we were practically right next to the waterfall. AMAZING!

Awwwww!
The trip up those 385 stairs was a lung buster but so worth it.

We tried to save a little bit of money by taking our own lunches and stopping at picnic areas to eat. The kids found things to keep them entertained.

Like this giant "home-made" teeter-totter.

After all the fun on this day, we drove through the Tetons and then on to Jackson Hole, Wyoming and stayed the night.

We couldn't come to Jackson and not take a picture in front of the antler arches.
We did a little shopping here but not much else.

So there's our Yellowstone vacation in a nutshell. We had such a good time with family and getting to experience all the things we did. And even after all the fun we had, you want to know what the best part of the whole trip was?






THIS!!!!!!!!!!

ALL sleeping at the same time! Pure peace and quiet!