Yellowstone National Park

 The one thing about showing all these pictures of our trip on the blog is that I don't feel like they do it justice. Josh and I had heard from several people to just drive through Yellowstone and spend more time at other parks. So we decided to do Yellowstone in a day... Long day folks... but fun! We started at the West entrance by Madison. Lots of geothermal activity all over the west side of the park. I tried to hit as many turn offs as we would. I did notice though that there were ten times more tourists at Yellowstone than any park we had been at yet, so there were several times throughout the day where we were stuck.

 Firehole Falls were majestic (I'm working on new ways to say amazing, let me know if you have any ideas, my high school English teacher would be disappointed). Since it was really our first stop we spent some time stopping all along the road. I really enjoyed it.

 All of the geysers were "bombdiggity," again in Josh's words. This one was called Fountain Paint Pot. It looked like boiling oatmeal that had been cooked too long, and smelled about the same. I couldn't decide if the smells were coming from the geysers or Josh.

 Each stop was better than the last but the steam on such a nice day made it a hot trip.

 At this stop there was a creaky old boardwalk around several natural phenomenas and about a million tourists. We of course stuck out like sore thumbs because we are just that cool. I really don't think our camera or huge backpack gave us away. :)

 This was Josh's favorite part of the park, and definitely one of my top favorites. It was at Midway Geyser Basin and it was the Gran Prismatic Spring. It seemed to be so many different colors and the bacteria growing all around only fed the illusion.

 So cool!!!! These pictures don't do it justice.

 We of course had to go see Old Faithful! I think we pulled up right after it went off. So we sat and ate the delicious sandwiches I had made and waited...

 And went to the visitor center... and waited...

 And then at 3:15 pm it happened! And it was impressive. You can't help but be amazed. I don't know that I would go see it again with so many other cool things in the park, but I am glad that we watched it.

 This was Kepler Cascades, I really liked this area. If I had any sort of balance or coordination I would have climbed down closer to the water. But unfortunately, my mother did not pass down any traits that are even close to giving me the agility of a cat. So I watched it from above.

 Josh went ahead and climbed out. If we had more time it would have been fun to hike a little more, but maybe next time.

 This was my favorite part!!! Bison! These are the first ones we noticed in the park. They were back off the road aways and no one else had really seen them yet, so we had them to ourselves. They were huge!

 Josh has been wearing these glasses the whole trip. He got them from my nephew, Gabriel. We asked this couple from Australia to take our picture together and the whole time the lady kept telling Josh to take his glasses off because he looked like a creepy green eyed monster from the Black Lagoon. This was all she would say to us while she laughed. hahaha Oh those crazy tourists.

 

Beautiful Bison, I want to bring them home with me, what do you think Mom and Shannon, can you watch them for me? :)

Lower Falls

Part of the crazy drive

 As we finally got around to Yellowstone Lake it was getting so late that we decided to just drive through the rest of the park. It was such a cool drive.

 We had the epic experience of having to stop and let the Bison cross the road. The ballsy tourists in front of us got out of the car to walk up close for a picture... again crazy tourists.

As we drove through Mammoth there were Elk every where! Josh was taking pictures, so of course I don't have any good shots to post :) This one was just funny though. The elk stopped at the beginning of the cross walk, looked both ways, then crossed in the crosswalk. The crazy part was that we were the only car to stop and let it cross the road... Silly tourists.
We ended the night with a Buffalo burger at a local Big Sky pub and a lot of memories

Next stop Grand Tetons, Mystic Lake, Custard's Battle Field, and the Black Hills National Forest. We will keep you updated!!