Yellowstone Park, fun with the family!!

For our family trip this year we went to Yellowstone.  We stayed at the Falls River Lodge,  just outside of Ashton, Idaho.  It was awesome and plenty spacious.

After most of us arrived, we were hungry.  We drove into Ashton and found Big Jud's.  

 Big Jud's @ Ashton, Idaho, featuring the biggest hamburger ever!! This picture is actually of someone else's hamburger.  We didn't order one of the Big Jud's at our table!! It was overwhelmingly big!!! There is a deal that if you eat the whole thing, you get it free, or something like that!! We didn't even try.

When we returned to the lodge, we had the special experience of gathering all the family together and witnessing the blessing of sweet little Grayson Cordell Lyman.  He received his name and blessing from his father, Deco.

After the blessing, a lot of the kids hung out in the hot tub outside of the cabin.

In the morning we all drove into Yellowstone Park.  

Our first stop was at Prismatic Springs. It was very a very large, impressive hot spring.  

Our next stop was at Old Faithful.  As usual, Old Faithful was very "faithful";  it spouted off right on schedule.

We left Old Faithful in separate cars and kind of got separated.  There was hardly any cell service in the park and so we could not communicate with the other cars often.  We (I was in with Noelle and Trent) saw some of the others when we stopped to take pictures of some huge elk at the side of the road, but after that, we completely lost track of them.  We went ahead and saw some of the sights along the way and knew that they were eventually hoping to end up at the Firehole River to swim.  

When we finally found them, sure enough, they we in the river swimming.  It was fun to hear the cheers when we showed up.  They thought we were lost.  We knew we weren't.

As we left the river, we were excited to see some cow elk with their calves.  So cute!!!

 Day one at Yellowstone was very successful!  We were disappointed that we had not seen a bear, so we started making plans for the next day to go out early and look for bears.  We were told that if we wanted to see bears we needed to go to the "upper loop" and we had only been on the "lower loop".

Bright and early the next morning at 5:30, Jed and I, Jeremy, Cohen, and Coy, and Trent and Maxon went on our animal sighting excursion.  We were rewarded right away.  We saw this awesome bison trekking down the road looking very formidable with remnants of a evergreen tree hanging on his horns (is that what you call those things on Bison?)  He must have had a fight with a tree.  We assumed he had won!!

And then we drove to a little town, in the park, named Mammoth Hot Springs.  We saw elk everywhere throughout the town just laying around on the lawns.  They obviously lived there in town.  They were not afraid of us.  We walked up pretty close to get pictures.

And then our early morning excursion really payed off; we saw some bears.  First of all was a little black bear out in a meadow.  A little further up the road, we saw a mother bear with two cubs.  The cubs were up in a tree.

And then a little further, we saw a bunch of cars stopped and were told that there was a bear about to cross the road.  Soon, there was a bear that came and crossed the road.  If you look really closely, the bear is in the shadow of the tree.  You can see her outline!! I promise she is there.

We visited a few geysers on our way out of the park.

And then we met up with the rest of the family in West Yellowstone.  We decided to go to the wildlife zoo there.

 We saw some grizzly bears and a few other animals.

And then some of us went back to the Firehole River to swim.

After one more nights stay in the cabin, it was time to head home.  We had a lot of fun memories from our time at Yellowstone!!

Our Trip to Oregon--Part Five--Time to Head Home

On Sunday morning it was time to head home.  We were sad to leave Oregon and the fun times that we had there.  We headed down the coast towards California.  We came to a scenic lookout and stopped for pictures.  This big tree had moss like stuff hanging from it. 

 It looked like something from a scary movie!!

 We were going to be leaving the ocean and got a few more pictures.

 Along the way, we came to this roadside tourist spot!! Paul Bunyan and his Blue Ox, babe were there to greet us.

After our stop at the Paul Bunyan place (Klamath, California) we traveled on to the Redwood Forest.  

 These trees are amazing.  We loved seeing them and standing by them where we felt like little ants!!

We eventually arrived in Red Bluff, California, where we spent the night.

 As we continued our trip the next morning, we crossed over into Nevada.  It was lunch time and we decided to take our chances at another casino buffet in Sparks,

Nevada.  We weren't disappointed.  It was delicious.

There was really no gambling going on here for me, only a chance for a picture to send to the kids!!  

We traveled on to Reno. Nevada, where we spent the night.

On Tuesday we started the last leg of our trip.  We finally arrived in Utah.  It was good to be back to familiar territory.  I was dropped off at Marilyn's and Matt's house to stay with the kids for a few days while Marilyn, Matt and Jensen went on trek.  The others traveled home to Blanding.  We had a super fun trip.  Thank you Uncle Mark for planning it and making all the arrangements!!