Yellowstone...What an Adventure!

Our fun neighbors invited us to go to Yellowstone for a camping trip over the weekend. My initial concern was camping in bear country. I was really worried about it until all the other stuff I was having to worry about while there. Lucky for us we survived. It wasn't so much about out surviving the bears, but our own kids.

This was our camp. We went with three other families, although we lost one to the cold after the first night. It was absolutely freezing and raining.

Our first night we went out and explored Fishing Bridge where we were able to spot some otters playing in the river.

We had to stay dressed like this most of the time. We slept in hats and gloves and by the end Miguel taught us how to heat ourselves the old school way. He heated rocks on the fire and then put them in our sleeping bags to keep our toes warm. I froze so much the first night that the other two nights I zipped myself into Sophia's sleeping bag. She kept me toasty. Plus the second day, rain got into our tent and soaked all of my bedding. Lucky me!

The kids just loved the bison. When we got out to go see them, Gabriela was freaking out and said she wanted to watch from the road.

We stopped at Artist's Point to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. Sophia started being a pill and wouldn't budge so Miguel grabbed her arm to pull her along and the next thing we know...SNAP...she dislocated her elbow. She wouldn't stop screaming and wouldn't move her arm. He tried placing back, but with no luck. I had to hold her and carry her for the rest of the day while we tried to find medical help, but with no luck. Finally at the end of the day, he gave it one last attempt and, wahla, it worked. She was good as new.

On our drive to Mammoth Hot Springs was did we see to our surprise.

A Grizzly Bear.

And what could be better than that?

A momma black bear and her two cubs.

And then further down, we saw another mom and cubs right next to the road. We got so lucky. I've never seen that many bears on any of my previous trips.

Because of Sophia's arm I had to carry her in a pack on my back while we explored the hot springs.

We spotted this elk on the drive back.

We went to see Old Faithful. Julianne kept teetering around the platform and while under Miguel's watch, falls off the platform onto her back infront of the hundreds of people around us watching the geyser spew. So embarrassing.

We took the kids on a 3 mile hike to see Morning Glory Pool. They needed to do a hike to complete the Junior Ranger program. It took forever and I thought Gabriela was going to loose it towards the end, but we were really proud of her making it all the way. At some points, Miguel was carrying two kids. Poor guy. A genuine pack mule. At least he was still smiling.

Here's our group. They were so fun to do this trip with. We love having such good friends.

Morning Glory Pool

The kiddos earning there Junior Ranger patches.

The beautiful Teton Mtn. Range on our drive back home.

Julianne had a tough time on the trip. She is cutting several teeth and had horrible diareaha, was throwing up, and doesn't like the car. She would get so excited to see the animals though, and would just point and yell.

We stopped in Jackson Hole

And as a tender mercy of the Lord, we saw a moose in the stream by the road on our way out of Jackson. It was the only animal we really wanted to see but hadn't in the parks.

After so many hours in the car, we ended the trip with some ice cream and a movie.