Yellowstone!

     While we've all been looking forward to this bucket list item, it's safe to say that Eldon and Michael were the most excited about visiting this National Park. It exceeded our expectations in several areas. #1. How cool and freaky all the geothermal features were. #2. The size of the crowds for this time of the year. #3.How huge the park actually is. #4. How little of it we would experience in 2.5 days. All that being said, we had a fabulous time. It felt like we breezed through and simply hit the surface of certain areas without learning a lot so excuse my lack of explanations for the pictures.

We saw so many elk!

Beautiful waterfalls and a sweet little lady.

There was lots of bison too.

I believe this was the Tower area. Lots of neat rock formations in this canyon.

I do love waterfalls!

Ethan took great pleasure in watching the chipmunks.

At Frying Pan Spring you could hear lots of sizzling!

We'd love to live here.......if there was no other people 😊

Steam poured out of many random places!

The Paint Pots were neat too.

It was hard to see the "pots" for all the steam but we sure smelled them!

The day has come when our children can keep ahead of us hiking.......if they want to.

Yup, that's Old Faithful! We even got sprayed by the mist, much to Ethan's delight.

Emily and Michael having a great time.

Fascinating to watch this spring boil!

It made us as parents very happy to see our children loving the outdoors! We nearly had to drag them away at times.

Dragon's Mouth Spring. It really did sound like a dragon roaring!

There was pools of water and neat plants all over the place!

A bull elk bugling in the motel lawn.

Roosevelt's Arch. The quote says "For the benefit and enjoyment of the people." It is thanks to him that we have places like Yellowstone!

Mammoth Springs was............massive! The different colors vary on the water temperature and what bacteria is growing there.

A herd of young mountain sheep ran down the road past us.

An elk calf right out our window.

A kind tourist took this family picture for us.

 It was intriguing to see pictures showing how much Mammoth springs has grown in 10 years, due to mineral build-up.

Gorgeous!

Happy boys! We walked for 2 miles on boardwalks through Mammoth Springs, up and down lots of stairs, and they huffed and puffed much less the the adults 😐

The Aspen trees were yellow and so pretty against the green pines!

We did learn that Lodgepole Pines must have fire to burn off the big trees and allow the pine cones to open so new trees can grow. It's amazing learning all these neat facts about how God created his world!

     So that is a small bit of our visit to Yellowstone. We have lofty plans to go back and thoroughly explore it but who knows how God will lead us?