Best. Day. Ever. We woke up at 6 in the morning...Mom says "It was 5:30, thanks to Dad!" We left for the park by 6:30 in search of 2 things: bears and bison. Our first stop was hydrothermal geysers and artists paint pots. The pots have hydrosulfuric acid under the surface at huge, high temperatures and when it mixes with the rock it makes this crazy kind of paint craters that bubble like little volcanoes. Beck absolutely hated them...see photo (: Then bison were coming our way and I swear they kept coming ALL day. We saw them everywhere...in campsites, walking down the road, walking across the road, throwing themselves around in the dirt...bison everywhere!! By now it was 8:30 and we were driving along and then...dunh dunh dunhhhh critter jam! We pulled over and sure enough everyone is watching a big grizzly bear dig up stuff...just about 25 yards away! Coolest sight evveeerrrrr. Could the day get any better? It wasn't even 10 a.m.! Much to Beck's...slight complaining ("Why do we have to keep stopping at the smoke places?!") we headed off to more geysers in Mammoth Falls and elk sightings galore. Next, we went to the northeast corner of the park and pulled off to see a petrified tree. Woot woot. Mom needed out of the car...desperately. Since everyone in the car agreed we could hike now, we turned away from the petrified wood and headed into bear country down a cute little trail that Dad kept saying "I wish I had my running shoes!" And it was beautiful by the way (: About 1/4 mile in, Dad says to Beck, "Hey buddy, I should probably be in front in case of a bear." And for the first time ever, Beck said, "Okay!" Dad takes the lead and sure enough, right around the corner there's a black bear rummagin' in the grass. We watched for awhile until he decided he wanted to escort us back to our car! Sooooo, he starts walking towards us at his "lumbering pace" while we're almost jogging trying to keep our distance. By this time, we had picked up more people and the little bear was driving about a herd of 15+ people towards the parking lot. At certain points he was about 10 yds away... yes 10. And we weren't trying to be that close...he was just fast! We were almost to the parking lot when my Dad spotted a second one in front of us. Turns out, "our bear" didn't like us in between him (her?) and his buddy. We got to the car still buzzing about what had just happened and having had created a HUGE critter jam. Reede felt the need to prove this so she decided to yell really loud... "WE CREATED THIS CRITTER JAM!" Luckily we beat the traffic and headed off to find more pronghorn antelope...see picture (: After that, we drove off and found a huge valley full of thousands of bison. Mom and Reede found bison hair? fur? and gave it to Beck because apparently his life wouldn't go on without it. And we're off again looking for Bighorn Sheep...practically the only animal we hadn't seen yet! And guess what? Dad spotted some on the top of a cliff dropping into a suppppeeerrrr steep canyon. Next up, 1) Beck fell asleep. Good. 2) Exciting for my parents, not for us kids...we pulled over in Hayden Valley looking for wolves. We were here for 1 1/2 hours looking for the wolves that never came. But we did see 2 big herds of elk that were supposed to alert us when the wolves arrived. Yeah. They didn't have a care in the world. I don't know if wolves were ever coming. Great fun. Mom says "We met the nicest people ever! Anyone who has a 3 inch binder full of wolf data dating from 1995 is going to be an interesting conversation." I guess I could agree to that...oh and by the way we're making Reede a "poo-folio" cause she seems to like taking pictures of it. 13 hours in the park and we were drop dead tired. We headed out and once back at the hotel, Mom and Dad went on a date while I watched Beck and Reede in the pool. Then we ate dinner and went out for ice cream! Tomorrow we're spending the Fourth of July going through Big Sky, Montana and up to Missoula for the night.
Okay the pictures wouldn't go tonight so I'll put them up tomorrow when I have better connection..sorry bout that cause they were pretty good (:
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