During our second day at Yellowstone, we drove around the Lower Loop and saw all of the cool sites along the way. By this time, the lovely sickness Emily and Becca had the day before had now moved to Taylor and Russell was feeling a little queasy too. Yeah!
Well along the Lower Loop, we first stopped at Lake Village to get another look at Yellowstone Lake. Then moved on to the West Thumb of the Lake.
Here we saw the West Thumb Geyser Basin. There were geysers and sulphur pots and hot springs all over. Since people were not feeling well, we did not hike around the trails on the basin. I just walked along the trails by the parking lot.
We also saw some more wildlife and waterfalls along the road. After seeing West Thumb, we decided to go out the south entrance of Yellowstone and drive in to the Grand Teton National Park to see the Grand Tetons.
The Teton mountain range was so beautiful especially with all of the snow caps. This was definitely worth seeing.
See I told you they were beautiful. We stopped at a picnic area to eat lunch and enjoy the scenery. It was so nice to sit and relax in nature. I love picnics in the mountains.
When they were done eating, Colby, Tyrel, and Jack had their own gunfight using sticks. These boys are so crazy. Anything they find is either a gun or a sword. We just laughed at them while they were having their war.
Poor Russell and Emily were still not feeling up to par so they took a little nap while we were eating lunch. As we were heading back to the trucks to get back on the road, we saw these cute prairie dogs. They loved getting scraps from our lunch and we had fun feeding them.
We continued driving through the Tetons to about the middle of the Park. Here we stopped at the Colter Bay Village gift shop. We looked around the gift shop and visitor center for a while before walking down to the Bay to get some more pictures and throw rocks in the water.
I think this view is so amazing. I love the pine trees around us and the beautiful mountain range behind us. I really think we need to go back to the Grand Tetons and drive through the whole thing through Jackson Hole and all. Someday...
We turned back around and drove back to Yellowstone to continue along the Lower Loop. Our next stop was the ever popular Old Faithful:
Old Faithful goes off every 90 minutes and shoots water so high. It was amazing to watch. While we were there, we were able to watch it go off twice. After watching it go off the first time, we walked around the Upper Geyser Basin near Old Faithful and saw all of the other little geysers.
Our favorite little geyser was the Anemone geyser or what we called the Flushing Toilet geyser. This little geyser was cool to watch. First the water bubbles up through the hole. Then it starts bubbling even faster until the water is spraying up into the air maybe about 3 feet or so. We had to be careful because the boardwalk is right by this geyser so when it was shooting off, steam and water sprayed us and it was kind of hot and stinky. After it is done spraying, the water slows down and then gets sucked back into the ground through the hole so it looks like a flushing toilet. We watched this two or three times before moving on.
We walked through the Yellowstone Lodge after seeing all of the geysers. The Lodge architecture is incredible. It looked like a giant tree house because everything was made of wood. It is also really tall and has many stories. As we were exploring the Lodge, we saw Old Faithful go off again.
We thought about eating at the Lodge but it was a little too expensive. Also by this time, Russell was getting worse, and Jacee and Taylor had started feeling the effects of this flu bug too. We decided to get some yummy Huckleberry ice cream at the Inn and then head out.
On our way back to camp, we continued along the Lower Loop. We drove passed the Firehole Lake:
At this point, the flu bug caught up with Jacee and she chummed the bears all along the way back to camp. Poor girl. Next we drove to the Firehole Falls:
These falls were so beautiful. I am glad we were able to see them. Unfortunately, at this point, the flu bug caught up with Colby and he lost all of the Huckleberry ice cream he had just eaten. Luckily we had the barf cups! Well the Huckleberry ice cream was great going in but smelling it coming out was a totally different story... blah.
So we tried to get back to camp as fast as we could while still seeing some sites.
The last site was Gibbons Falls. These were also cool but since I was the only healthy one in our car, I was the only one who got out to see them. So I took a picture for the sickies.
On the way back to camp, we ran into a herd of buffalo:
The buffalo were right on the road so we were kind of herding them down the road because they would not move. It was so cool! We were finally able to pass but we were scared one was going to hit us!
Before getting back to camp, the flu bug hit Logan too. More regurgitated purple ice cream...blah. Luckily this was the only time Logan threw up. Colby on the other hand was up all night dry heaving. The poor little thing I felt so bad because he could not sleep or puke. By this time I was just ready to go home to our real house. Luckily by the morning we all felt a little better.
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