Yellowstone Adventures!

This summer, Merril is setting up radio repeater towers for some races near national parks. He did one near Bryce Canyon already and he has one near Yellowstone. We decided to turn it into a family camping trip! Merril and I stayed in Yellowstone when we were on our honeymoon 21 years ago. That's the last time I was there. It's a 9 1/2 hour drive so we started at 6:30 a.m. to get a jump on the day. Merril went up the night before with Jack to get the camper. He picked up our teeny toy hauler in Cove Fort after the Fish Lake SAR conference. The rest of the kids and I went up in the Expedition the next day.

Merril went up and picked out a camp spot and the rest of us drove and stopped in Rexburg for groceries. We met up with Merril and made dinner.

The next morning, Merril was supposed to be able to set up the repeater early and then go with us into the park but he hit a snag. So I picked up Jack from him and the kids and I hit the park. We tried to go straight to Old Faithful but it was noon and everyone and their dog were on their way to Old Faithful too. We crawled along in 2 mph traffic for around 45 minutes and decided to bag it and go see something else.

We turned around and immediately found some volcanic hot springs!

And Gibbon Falls.

We spent the afternoon finding cool places to stop. 

We came out of the park to make dinner and meet up with Merril. Maxine made flower crowns while I made dinner.

Then we went back into the park to see Old Faithful in the evening. It was perfect! No traffic and the evening light was great to watch Old Faithful with little crowds. Five stars!

We also stopped by Grand Prismatic Spring for the last stop of the day.

The next day, Merril had some radio tower things to finish up and we spent the morning playing at the campsite. Maxine was in her element with the all the beautiful wildflowers.

Flowers ended up in all the girls' hair.

After a bit, we went into West Yellowstone town to shop for souvenirs. Merril finished taking down the tower and met up with us. We decided to get lunch at this funky taco bus.

Mr. Beast was playing in the taco bus.

We went back to camp and had some down time. I jumped in the hammock. Merril rode his motorcycle, kids explored, people napped.

The kids whittled sticks for roasting marshmallows.

This shot is to show how gorgeous our camping spot was. We camped on Idaho public lands and we had a lot of open space to ourselves. We explored and made noise and had a fantastic time! Merril picked the best spot!

I pulled out some glowsticks and the kids played around with them. The kept whipping them and getting them stuck in trees. Jack climbed up a few trees to get them down so we didn't litter. 

The next day was Sunday and we went to church. We spent the afternoon lazily floating down a shallow river. Then we had another camp fire. The next day we packed up and went home.

This was a perfect camping trip! The area was so pretty, weather was great and the kids played well together. It was a great trip!