On Our Way Home; WY, MT, ID & UT

Saturday, June 21 was the last day of our trip.  Thankfully we all woke up somewhat healthy.  Colby still had no appetite but was at least not trying to puke every hour.  Russell and Emily felt much better.  Unfortunately the sickness had now touched my dad.  He was up all night with the stomach ache and just not feeling good.  We still had a long way to go to get home and it was going to be a long trip being sick.  We headed out early to get to Idaho before too late.  The Hughes had to go to a wedding in Pocatello that night.  We drove through four states this day.  We started obviously in Wyoming.   

As we were driving through Yellowstone going from the East entrance to the West entrance, we passed another herd of buffalo right on the side of the road.  These animals never ceased to amaze me.  The west entrance of Yellowstone is in Montana.  The second state we drove through was Montana.  We stopped in a little town called West Yellowstone, MT because Colby threw up again.  Thankfully this was the last time he puked.  We continued to drive through Montana until we reached our third state of the day, Idaho.  Okay so we really only drove through a little corner of Montana, about 20 miles.  But hey I am counting it.  

We drove through Harriman State Park in Idaho and stopped for lunch at Big Springs.  This place was really beautiful.  The water from this spring was so clear you could see everything in the water down to the gravel bottom.  

It was fun to drop bread crumbs off of the bridge and watch the huge trout and the seagulls eat the bread. Emily accidentally dropped her whole sandwich into the water.  Too bad it was still in the Ziploc bag or the fish and seagulls would have had a good time with her peanut butter sandwich.  There was no way to get her sandwich back either because it just floated right down the river.  She was so sad.  Grandma made her a new one though.  Below you can see how clear the water was.  If you look closely you can see the fish in the water too (the red arrow is pointing to it)

Right by the spring pond/river a German immigrant, Johnny Sack, built his house.  This little house in the picture above is actually his pump house and the little water wheel generated energy from the water coming out of the spring. He was a smart little guy in his time.  The cabin is now owned by the Forest Service.  This was a fun little stop for us to eat and stretch our legs.  

 We drove through Rexburg, Idaho Falls, Pocatello, and finally Downey, ID.  In Downey, Lacie had some friends that said we could stay at their house (well, yard) for the night.  The Hughes were staying of course because they had their wedding to go to and it was their friends.  My parents stayed too because my dad was not feeling well and he was tired of driving and needed to go to bed.  We didn't know what to do.  We really wanted to make it to Logan before the Gossner Cheese Factory closed.  We love their milk and ice cream and go there whenever we can.  The store would be closed on Sunday if we decided to stay.  We also wanted to make it to the Pepperidge Farm factory but it closed early on Saturdays. We also still had along way to go to make it home.  So we had to make a decision: Do we keep driving or spend the night in Idaho.  Well Russell took two steps outside in Downey and got Hay fever so bad he had to drink some Benadryl in order to breathe.  So that made our decision.  We drove on.  We soon hit our fourth state of the day, Utah.  Gossners closed at 6:30 and we made it there by 6:00.  Yes!  So we got our flavored milks and our ice cream and were out of there just in time.  

As we drove through Logan, we stopped at Willard park to eat dinner.  While I cooked dinner the kids had a blast playing on the playground.  They had been cooped up on the car all day long so they needed to get some energy out.  At the rodeo arena near the park, a monster truck show was going on.  We ate dinner fast and walked over to see if we could get in or at least look over the fence.  Well when we got there, the guys taking the tickets let us in for free! Russell and I were amazed because the tickets were like $26 each!  Well we didn't ask questions and walked in to find a seat.

Even though Colby was still not 100% better, he LOVED the monster truck show.  He said this was the best part of the whole trip.  Emily and Logan liked the trucks too.

The four monster trucks did a lot of cool stunts and tricks but in the end the big blue truck ended up winning by popular vote.  This was a fun show to watch.  I am glad we decided to drive down instead of stay in Idaho.  After the show, we walked back to the park and our truck and trailer.  It was starting to get dark but we decided to at least drive to Brigham City before stopping for the night.  

We spent the night in the Wal-Mart parking lot in Brigham City.  The next morning Emily puked again...  I was so tired of sick kids that I told Russell lets just go home!  So we drove straight home from Brigham City to St. George with no stops except for gas and bathroom breaks.  I don't know what bug we caught in Cody, WY but I am so glad it finally went away when we got home.

This was such a fun trip.  We got to see and do so many things.  I hope my kids remember the fun times and memories we have made over the last week and a half.  I know I will remember the trip for a long time.  I am glad we got to take the trip with my family.  That definitely made it more fun to have other people there too.  Emily, Colby, and Logan were good kids on this trip.  Yes they had their moments especially after being in the car for a long time and being sick, but for the most part, they were really good travellers. I think I would do this trip again because there was so much to do that we could not do everything.  It would be fun to go back and see different sites.  

We definitely had a lot of fun but it is nice to be home now too.  It took us all day after we got home to clean out the trailer and the truck, another day to do the mounds of laundry and another day to get back into the swing of things.  But the trip was well worth it.   

Grand Tetons & Yellowstone, WY: Day 2

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.

Yellowstone, WY: Day 1

Thursday, June 19 started off very interesting.  During the night, both Emily and Becca woke up throwing up.  Yeah getting sick on a trip is so fun!  (not!.)  Anyway we didn't know what to do.  So we just hung out at the Wal-Mart parking lot for a while.  We had originally planned to see some more of the sites at Cody like the Old West Trail Town but with sick kids, we decided not to.  We needed more time in Cody but things happen.  Finally we decided to just get in the truck, let the kids sleep it off, and head to our next stop, Yellowstone.  We packed a barf bowl just in case.   

Cody is about 50 miles from the East entrance of Yellowstone so we didn't have that far to drive.  This was also a pretty drive.  Just outside of Cody is a huge tunnel through the mountain.  The tunnel is probably a half mile long and it was so cool to drive through.  Colby loved it.  Emily did too (minus the part about being sick).  

We decided to camp just outside the east entrance to Yellowstone at a campground.  The campground was really nice and we were pretty much to ourselves.  The only bad thing was there were bears.  Yeah.  Everywhere you looked there were bear warning signs like the one above.  We had to be extra careful not to leave anything that might have a scent outside including food, garbage, and even our cooking grill.  We had to store our grill in the bear-proof boxes.  It was so scary.  I was afraid to let the kids go outside especially at night.  Luckily we had no bear encounters.  It would have been cool to see a bear in Yellowstone but not in our camp.  

It snowed the day before we got to Yellowstone so it was pretty cold the first day.  So if you are wondering what snow does in summer... it comes to Yellowstone: 

After parking the trailers, we drove into Yellowstone.  Along the road was this cool waterfall from a spring or runoff from snow.  We spent two days in Yellowstone and enjoyed every minute.  The first day we drove the Upper Loop and saw all of the cool sights.   First was Yellowstone Lake:

As well as the stink pots at the Lake.  Yellowstone had a distinct smell... Rotten eggs.  Probably from all of the sulfur pots everywhere.  The Yellowstone Lake is similar to Crater Lake in that it is a sunken volcano.  The cone of the volcano is the island on the lake.  Over the past few years, the island on Yellowstone Lake has been slowly rising and the temperature of the water has been rising as well.  Scientist believe this is because the volcano is getting ready to blow again!  Now they don't know when it will blow so it could be years and years down the road but still that is a scary thought!  I cannot imagine the damage that will cause.  

Of course being in Yellowstone, we saw a ton of wildlife.  My favorite were the buffalo:

These two buffalo were right by the side of the road.  I love how this buffalo is just scratching his head on the sign like he owns it.  These are magnificent creatures.

We continued around the Upper Loop to some more stink pots.  This is the Dragon Mouth, Mud Volcano, and Sulphur Caldron.  These things were cool to see and it was so amazing to see the water bubbling up out of the holes.  We smelled so good afterward too but I don't think the smell helped Emily at all.  She was still feeling sick.

We drove to the Canyon Village and the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and saw this amazing waterfall:

This is the Upper Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and it was so amazing. 

We loved looking at the falls.  It is crazy how nature has a way of capturing you.  I could have just sat and stared at this waterfall for hours.  As you can see, this also helped Emily perk up a bit.  She was still not feeling well and wanted to ride in the wagon but she was doing much better than when we started the day.

Next we drove to the brink of these falls.  This was also awesome but also a little scary.  We were right above the waterfall and could see how fast the water was running over the falls.  Call me a worrier but I just kept imagining me or one of the kids tripping, falling over the guardrails, and over the waterfall never to be seen again.  Yeah it was giving me the creeps so we took a few pictures and left.  On to more sights.  

Next we drove to Mammoth Hot Springs near Yellowstone's north entrance. Here we saw a lot of elk: 

In fact, as you can see, we came up close and personal with the elk.  These elk were just chilling on the grass at the Mammoth Springs village.  There were mamas and babies everywhere.  Some of the tourists, wanting to get a good picture, got really close to the elk even coming between mamas and their babies!  We were just waiting for the mama elk to charge them but luckily they didn't.   

After checking out the elk, we walked up to the Mammoth Hot Spring.  This was really cool to see too.  I loved all of the different colors of the rocks.  It was also interesting to learn how all of the different colors were formed.  

It was getting late so we decided to head back to camp by way of Norris and then Fishing Bridge.  We saw even more wildlife including buffalo, elk, and deer.  We were still holding out hope for bear and wolf (just not in our camp).  

Cody, WY

After spending the night in a parking lot in Deadwood, we woke up bright and early to head to our next destination, Cody, WY.  Cody was about 360 miles away which was about a 6 hour drive (which really turned out to be about a 8 hour drive for us...).  The drive from Deadwood to Cody was quite pretty though.  It had been raining so the sky was still over cast and as we climbed the mountain, we were driving in the clouds:

As we got into Wyoming and drove through the Big Horn National Forest, we saw some more amazing sights.  We saw a couple of big moose.  Below is a picture of a mama moose and her baby is in the bush:

Coming down, the mountain in Big Horn was quite steep.  We stopped at one point coming down the mountain to let Colby go to the bathroom.  Because we stopped so fast on the hill, our brakes started to get hot.  So we needed to let them rest a while.  On the side of the road where we stopped, we saw this cool waterfall and rapids.  When the brakes had cooled and Colby had got to the bathroom, we put the truck in Granny gear and tried to crawl down the rest of the mountain as slow and safe as we could.  We still had 8 miles of steep downhill to go.  We finally made it down with no problems and continued to Cody.  

Along the way we listened to a CD called LDS Laughs.  One of the speakers made up a few jokes about "You Might Be A Mormon If..."  They were so funny.  One of the jokes he said, "You might be a Mormon if your family drives through a small town and doubles its population."  Well it is sad to say but we did just that.  I wish I could remember the name of the Wyoming town we drove through but I do remember the population sign said 20!  Well there were 20 of us so we doubled the population.  We must be Mormons!  I thought that was pretty funny.

As we got to Cody, the first stop we made was to the Cody Murals: 

This was a really neat experience to see this Mural.  This mural, pioneer museum, and visitor center is all located in an actual working LDS chapel in Cody.  The Mural depicts the first 70 years of the Church including the beginnings with Joseph Smith's first vision, to the expansion and pioneer treks west, to settling in the Salt Lake Valley. Images of the first eight prophets of the church are also in the mural. The Mural is absolutely beautiful.  The mural was painted by Edward Grigware, a local artist.  Glen Nielson and Llyod Taggart, both active members of the church, wanted the chapel in Cody to be more than just a chapel for worship, they wanted it to provide a way for tourists to learn more about the Mormon faith.  They asked Grigware to paint the mural and he accepted.  Since Grigware was not a member of the Church, he spent a year researching the history of the church so that he would be able to accurately depict with feeling the journey and history of the church.  I think he did a great job.  He has since painted murals for the Los Angeles temple.  The missionaries at the Mural said that Grigware never did become a member of the Church because he promised his dying wife that he would never join that Mormon church.  You know he felt something though because he said that while he was painting the Mural, a hand greater than his own was guiding his brush.  Inside the chapel/visitor center is also a Pioneer Museum full of information and items from the first pioneers in Cody.  This was a really cool stop.

After seeing the Mural, we headed downtown to see Cody.  Since Cody, WY is named after Buffalo Bill Cody, we had to see one of his shows.  

Here is the wild bunch including (left to right) Fifi Larue, Sundance Kid, Mississippi, Butch Cassidy, Calamity Jane, Wild Bill Hickok, Bandit Queen, Johnny Ringo (turned sheriff), and finally the man himself, Buffalo Bill Cody.  Each day in Cody they have these Wild West shows in the streets.  And no Wild West show would be complete without a shoot out: 

Of course the good guys won the bad guys in the shoot out.  The Cody Gunfighters put on a good show.  Colby loved seeing the cowboys and the gun fight. 

The Gunfighters even posed for pictures with us.  They were very friendly.  

After the gunfight, we walked through the Cody Dug Up Gun Museum.  It was really interesting to see all of the guns in this collection.  The owner of this museum has been collecting and finding old guns for nearly 30 years.  The guns in the museum range anywhere from the Civil War to WWII and more.  

We went back to the Irma Hotel where the gun fight was and took some really funny pictures on their awesome bar stools:

As you can see, we had a little too much fun on the stools.  In fact the people around us were even taking pictures of us on the stools.  Yeah we are weirdos.  

We decided to spent the night in the Wal-Mart parking lot.  When we parked, there was maybe one other trailer in the parking lot but by the time we went to bed, there were like 20 trailers.  It looked like an RV park, it was so funny.