Epic Idaho Adventure- Take 2

Monday in Idaho was our Yellowstone day.

We loved going to Yellowstone while we lived in Idaho.  We bought a year pass more than once during that time, so of course we wanted to spend a day there.  We enjoy spotting wildlife, playing the license plate game (I think we got almost 40 this time!) and just spending some quality time together (how can you not when you spend most of the day in the car with each other!)

Just a word of warning this post contains a boatload of photos! Sorry in advance. :)

So here we go:
First animals spotted were these elk grazing in a meadow.

We headed north towards Mammoth and Tower/Roosevelt once we got into the park, instead of south towards Old Faithful. You're more likely to see bears if you go this way and that is always Kris' main objective when going to Yellowstone.

We took the Artists Paintpots hike. It's interesting to see how much it has changed over the years, it's much more dried up and crusty now, but still bubbling.

There are some gorgeous views from this hike.

We stopped and ate lunch at Sheepeater Cliff. This place is a little boy's dream, all the climbing and exploring your little heart can handle.

Matthew was the first to climb to the top. He made a little friend up there. We've seen rock chucks every time we've come to Sheepeater Cliff.

We saw deer lounging in the middle of the town at Mammoth.

Kris was excited to spot this deer.

We've been to Yellowstone and seen herds of literally hundreds of buffalo, this time we only saw one or two all by their lonesome.

After Mammoth we headed north to the Gardiner entrance because this is where you can spot the mountain goats, but all we saw was this skeleton. We surmised perhaps one of them fell from the sheer, rocky cliffs to his untimely death. 

Then we headed to Tower, but instead of taking the normal hikes there, a small one caught our eye off the side of the road. It turned out to be one of our best finds, it offered some of the most amazing views of the waterfalls and the river and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

I'm not sure why Owen's face looks so funny in the picture above but the view was beautiful!

Oh! My! Gosh! I just love, love, love the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, it's my favorite part of the park. It's where you see how the park got it's name.

And...we got super lucky on this little gem of a hike because we got to see a mountain goat and her baby. The first pic is the mom and the second one is the baby. These are my personal favorite animals to see in Yellowstone and this is only the second time we've seen them so I was pretty dang excited!

It's so incredible to watch them navigating these mountains, they are so stinkin' steep and rocky and they just hop around like it's nothing.

It's always nice when some kind soul stops and asks if we'd like them to take a picture of all of us together.

At the end of our day the kids were making friends with these little buggars or should I say beggars? I think these little guys are a little too used to the public. I think one of my kids could have picked one up if I'd let them, it kinda grossed me out. Like rats in New York City or something, although not quite that bad...

Leelee was cracking me up in the bathroom, she thought it was hilarious to see herself in the dryer.

We had a gorgeous almost full moon following us on our way home.

Unfortunately, Kris did not get to see a bear. We had a close call on that one. If we had only taken one of the little side drives we would've seen one. We could see all the cars stopped on the road after we decided not to do it, so Kris pulled over but we couldn't see anything from where we were. A little ways down the road we asked someone what everyone was looking at and they said there was a bear up there. Kris was pretty bummed, so close yet so far...

It was a pretty great day at the park though, in addition to all these animals we also saw a fox and a bald eagle. Not too bad, if you ask me. Just don't ask Kris... :)

Rockin' the R Mountain

On Saturday we decided to be adventurous and outdoorsy and spontaneous- we decided to hike the "R" Mountain. It is an old dormant volcano mountain outside of town and we had driven by and around it a few times. Honestly, the kids (mostly Owen) were a little afraid of the prospects of hiking a "volcano" and all that conjures up in the imagination. In his little mind it could blow at any second sending us running for our lives from flowing lava. When we convinced him that was not going to happen we set off on our little adventure.

Just hiking from the parking lot to the foot of the mountain had us winded (ok, so maybe we're a little out of shape) and we were worried we had no hope of making it to the top.

Rex looks cute in pink, don't you think?

They even have chains at one part because it is fairly slippery and steep.

We saw this rock and dubbed it "Rock With a Hole In It"

We thought this one looked like a skull, do you see it?

We saw cool caves. Which I'm sure have hosted many a make-out session.
At about this spot of the hike we met a nice young jogger running down the mountain. Kris asked him if he had just run up the mountain and was now coming down and he said, "yes, but I forgot my camera." And then he continued jogging down. I didn't know if he was joking or if he was really going back down to get his camera but wouldn't you know that a few minutes after we got to the top he got to the top too, again. Wow. He was the one who took the picture of all of us at the top. Then he ran around the rim of the volcano and back down. Holy cow.


We saw amazing views.


This is the "bowl" of the volcano, which the kids were sorely disappointed in,
I believe they were expecting to see bubbling lava inside.

How's that sock taste? (Owen is too funny)

Ahhh, the taste of sweet success! We felt like we were on top of the world!

Ok, so we know it's not like hiking the Tetons or something,

but we were pretty proud of ourselves

and maybe next year it WILL be the Tetons!