Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Yellowstone Part 5: A REALLY Long Day

This was the day that we moved from our cabins in Mammoth to the Old Faithful Inn... with lots of sightseeing along the way.

(If you're really confused as to why this is Part 5... Here are Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4)

I apologize in advance for the copious amounts of pictures in this post. But if a picture's worth a thousand words then you're spared that many of of mine, right?

Let's get started then...

Cutest boy ever, sitting on Daddy's suitcase while we get ready to leave Mammoth.

Letting Grandma feed him his morning banana.
Doing his part to help load the cars...
Carrying Mommy's water bottles!
He's a good little helper!
Driving south through the Hayden Valley is where you usually see the herds of bison.
There are a lot of them.
They like to roll in the dirt, which is kind of cool to watch. Picture a horse rolling, only bigger.

Much, much bigger. Look, that's a minivan next to the bison!
This creates "animal jams" since you kind of let them go where they want to.
Which many times is right down the middle of the road!
Mamas and babies... cute, but don't get too close!

Then we have the sulfur pits, yes, they smell LOVELY.
Mr. Bison was just standing there, as if for a photo op!Grandma, Brian and Cory

This one is called Dragon's Mouth. Bet you can't tell why!
(the water was gushing out of the hole like waves making the accompanying roaring noise)
Lunch stop at Lake Hotel. The oldest still standing structure in the Park.
This is the opposing view to the above picture.
The flat mountain in the middle is Avalanche Peak.
An amazing view and a vertical hike to get there!
The whole crazy crew!
We finally made it to Old Faithful just before the geyser was "scheduled" to go off.
This is the view from the Observation Deck on the front of the Inn.
You may not know this, but Old Faithful is not the most spectacular geyser in the Park, it's just the most predictable.
It erupts about once every 90 minutes, give or take 20 minutes.
And yes, MANY people want to know "when are you going to turn the geyser on?" asked of various Park employees!

After watching the geyser we unloaded.
This was Cory's mode of transportation!

Then we all hurriedly got ready for dinner. You MUST have reservations to eat in the dining room at the Inn. It's worth it though!Grandma and Grandpa H.

Joel and Allison

Grandma and Grandpa B. - Grandpa is silly!

Our family.

The reason for the fancy dinner... it was almost the twin's birthday!
Happy 30th birthday!
Thanks for staying to the end... hopefully it won't take me 2 more months to finish up with our trip!

4 comments:

  1. Okay, these pictures have convinced me that we need to take a family vacation out there. Of course, that would require having more than a weeks vacation. Hmmm....have to work on that.

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  2. You're really making me want to go back. I loved Yellowstone the one time we visited.

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  3. Anonymous7:01 PM

    I don't care what anyone says. I love posts written with photos. Probably why I use copious amounts of them on my blog.

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  4. Anonymous7:46 PM

    I can't believe those Bison are not afraid of the cars! That's got to be pretty cool to see in person.

    ReplyDelete

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