Yellowstone Day 1

My dad's secretary has a cabin located in Island Park, Idaho and she graciously let our family stay there for the entire first week of July. Island park is about 20 minutes from the West Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. All of my siblings, their spouses and kids were able to come which is awesome! (Jill, Jared & Maya weren't able to join us until Wednesday night so they won't be in any of the first 3 days of photos.)

This is at the Yellowstone National Park Information Center. They had many hands-on things for the kids to attack each other with look at and we learned what kind of animals we could expect to get to see while in the park.

 Various animal pelts... (yuck!) Tyson, Cara, Jordyn, Thomas, Rusty

The West Entrance of Yellowstone. It was quite a busy time for the park!

Our first stop was the Lower Geyser Basin. There were many small geysers and paint pots here along the walking pathways.

This is what the kids thought of them... They did smell of sulphur...

This one sounded like a jet plane when it gurgled and burbled.

  

 

We stopped for a picnic lunch break of sandwiches, chips, and fruit.

 The see-saw the girls made from two logs after they were finished eating! Clever!

Love this picture!

 The next stop was at the Midway Geyser Basin. This is the Firehole River running past. You can see the walking pathways that lead up and around the geysers to view. 

The orange color is caused by bacteria.

 Aunt Alison and the kids.

 The Boyer clan and Ron Washington (on Bryan's shirt...)

 After we hiked Midway Geyser Basin Bryan snuck up behind Cara at the edge of the river and scared her to death. It was pretty funny.

 Moving on to Old Faithful, the most well-known geyser in the world. We had to wait only 20 minutes after arrival for the geyser to erupt. There are bleacher seats all the way around the front of Old Faithful.

 Before Old Faithful blew it was smoking a bit...

 Getting started...

 Whoa!

 We learned that if Old Faithful's eruption lasts under 2.5 minutes it will go off again in about an hour but if the eruption is longer than 2.5 minutes (ours was) then it will be an hour and a half before it blows again. After we watched Old Faithful blow we went to the Visitors Center where there were many exhibits and interactive displays. We picked up a Junior Ranger booklet for Jordyn to complete and dropped some bank at the gift store. We all got t-shirts and hats and Bryan got a hoodie. The temperatures were AWESOME during our entire visit!

We stayed so long at the visitors center/gift shops we got to see Old Faithful erupt for a second time. It was just as impressive!