Yellowstone!

Our first summer trip this year was to Yellowstone!

We have loved taking the pop-up trailer and doing some good old camping!

Here we are at our first eating stop on the way there!

Camp! Good old West Yellowstone KOA!

Tyson!!!...

Just relaxing!

By the looks of what is on the table in the background we had fruit/chocolate/marshmallow cones for dessert!

They were delicious!!

We also tried apple smores (which are now my favorite!!)

and rolls on a stick filled with nutella or fruit or jam or whatever YUM!!

Thank you pinterest!!

Our first stop at Yellowstone....Old Faithful!

We were lucky enough to get a seat on a bench and Old Faithful went off about 15-20 mins after we sat down!

Waiting!

Our Lily was sure on one for pictures!! I love it! :)

The fam!

Pretty spectacular!!

This sequence of pictures kill me because of Lily!!

;)

Everything was so beautiful!

Tyson was my camera man and he took pictures of EVERYTHING!!

Lily kept tripping so it was mandatory that she held someone's hand the WHOLE time!

Cute little Blondie!!

Not sure what was up with all the peace signs...

Waiting for another geyser, but it took too long and it was already about 30 mins passed its approximate time!

Tyson has LOVED his pocket knife he got from Grandma Wendy at his baptism, here he is using the tooth pick from it!

What a cute couple!

(if I do say so myself!)

Macy using the binoculars...she couldn't see anything:)

Entertaining themselves waiting for the geyser!

Some of these looked good enough to jump into if they had been cold!

So, Lily refused to wear her Toms to walk around in because they had gotten wet before our trip and the leather inside of them curled up from drying so she acted like they didn't fit. So she wore her flip flops which started rubbing her feet so she got to ride on Brandon's shoulders for half the day!

and Macy got to ride on my back!

That day after leaving to head back to camp we tried to find a place that sold shoes in West Yellowstone, but there were no kid shoes to be found except for some Colombia ones that were $50 and she didn't like the style so that would have been a waste!! Luckily I talked her into wearing her Toms until the leather laid flat on the inside, which only took a few minutes at camp and she was just fine! Little stinker!!!

Tyson was such a trooper hiking and having the best time!

These were our favorite gloop pots at Artist or Fountain paint pots! (I can't remember now!)

A little bit of Marilyn came out in Brandon, he kept calling Artists paint pots, "Artisan", and he kept calling Fountain paint pots, "Fontaine"!!

Ha ha!! I thought it was hilarious!!

Camera man Tyson!

The first animal we saw was this Elk! He hung out in this same field the whole time we were there!

We followed a pinterest guide to Yellowstone with kids and it recommended that we stop at this Ranger Museum. We thought Tyson would love it, but Brandon and I found it more interesting than the kids! Go figure!

Tyson liked the petrified poop!

Our second animal on our way out of the park on the first day!

A Bison!

We broke out the glow sticks!

The next day we went to another museum and look at the bear the kids ran into!!

(Again Lily's face kills me! Tyson's is silly too, but you can't see it as much!!)

Ha ha ah!!

Ha ah Ha!!

Our next animals!

This Bison was right by the bathroom at the Yellowstone Grand Canyon.

Tyson couldn't help but say he had to go potty to get a closer look at the Bison which was just outside of the mens side of the bathroom!

The Bison in the background!

This river was spectacular!

We came upon a herd of about 250 (or more) head of Bison!

This guy was pretty close to all the cars!

Lunch by a lake!

We tried to rent a paddle boat, but they wouldn't let 5 of us in a 4 man boat :(

So we went on a hike instead to an natural bridge!

This Bison caught us off guard, so we went around him off the trail and got lost in some camp spots, we turned around and noticed that we missed the trail sign telling us to turn left because we were so fixated on the Bison!

He made me nervous that he could charge us!

Finally got on the right trail and started hiking!

Lily cried the whole way that she was tired and her legs hurt...we need to toughen her up a little!!

The lake we were supposed to take a boat on!

The natural bridge!

It was about a mile hike there and a mile back!

Playing in the little stream just down from the natural bridge!

Tyson found some mossy slime!

Classic boy making it look like boogers!!

We wanted to make sure that the kids saw a bear in Yellowstone, so we stopped at the bear sanctuary in West Yellowstone!

And did we see bears!

Rather large Grizzlies!

We signed the kids up to feed the bears!

They got to hide the food and then watch the bears turn over rocks and logs to find it!

We were so proud of our kids! They were well behaved and listened to all the instructions and when they were done they even said "thank you!"

Hiding the food!

In the gift shop!

We were lucky enough to find some Asians to take our picture by the Yellowstone sign!

They are the best at taking pictures!

and she took one more just in case!!

Our last day at Mammoth!

To keep Lily from complaining, we counted the stairs. One couple heard Tyson counting on his way down and they were on their way up and when they heard they still had 100 and something more to go they sighed!

Macy fell asleep for this one!

It reminded me of "Frozen" and Elsa's ice castle! (but it was hot!)

We stopped and got ice cream, and on our way out we saw all these Elk!

and once again seeing the animals made us miss the sign and we went the wrong way and made it to the north (I think) entrance instead of the way we wanted to go!

Lily had the camera in the car after stopping for a windy/rainy lunch!

Silly Lily!

We saw a lot of people pulled over looking at something, so I hopped out and got this great pic of this black bear before he hid closer to the tree. We tried to get the kids out to see, but he was hidden too well, so we got back in the car to head to the Tower Falls, our last stop in Yellowstone!

On our way there, Brandon had joked that we see deer at our house all the time, but we hadn't seen one deer at Yellowstone! We saw one on our way to Tower Falls so I teased him that Boom our trip was complete!! We saw a deer!!

When all of a sudden just before the Falls parking lot we saw this Momma Black bear and her two cubs! (we couldn't stop because the Rangers were guiding traffic, so the pics are a bit blurry)

So we drove passed 3 times to see them!

After seeing them, we decided that now Boom the trip was complete and there was no reason to try to hike one more hike with tired kids!!

It was such a fun trip!!

Goodbye Yellowstone! Till we meet again!!