Yellowstone

Since the kids have the first weekend in October off from school, we went to Yellowstone. James called his parents to see if we could use their trailer and we ended up with the cabin at Island Park.

We knew there was a fire and one road was closed; Norris to Madison. The fire was by Lake Village. We decided to make our way to Old Faithful and make it through the road closure. We did the Firehole Loop, the Lower Geyer Basin and some of the Paint Pots. The road from West Thumb to Fishing Bridge was only open three times a day. We went through at the noon time to make it to the Mammoth Area. We made a restroom stop at the Fishing Bridge and saw the sign that said "No Fishing from Bridge". We went to Mammoth via Canyon and Norris. It's 5 miles shorter. We would catch the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone on the way back through.

I had forgotten that we had been to Mammoth before. Connor decided to test the signs about the temperature of the water. Lucky for him it was cold. We took off to go back down to Canyon via Tower-Roosevelt. We stop off to see Tower Falls. We had been in the car so long that Connor, Leon and Trevor decided it was better to Pokemon instead of getting out. They had posted a sign at the falls stating that the road to Canyon was closed. They had said nothing at the gate entrance or when we passed through on the Southern route. So we had to drive back to Mammoth and take the way we came to get out. So we didn't stop at Canyon. It took us about 4 hours to get back to the cabin. It might have been shorter to take the North entrance out and around to West Yellowstone.

Saturday we decided to take it easy. We slept in and got to Old Faithful around 12:30 pm. James ran into a college classmate, Brent Quist in the visitor center. Old Faithful was timed to go off at around 1:38pm, well it went off at about 2 something. We got lunch and decided to make our way back out of the park. Alexia had gotten a postcard from Grandma Chapman with Morning Glory pool on the front and she wanted to see it. It was going to be an hour round trip hike from Old Faithful. James and I weren't too interested. I found an unpaved route to it that was shorter from another spot that I wanted to see. It was worth the hike.

Trevor had a get a pocket knife with his name on it and Alexia, a mug with her name. Or at least something close to it. Connor wanted something so we went to West Yellowstone, only he didn't know what he wanted. So he finally found a pocket watch. John and Loraine stayed with us and feed us. As always, alot of food. It was great weather the two days we were in the park; about 45 degrees and sunny. It was fun, but I would have rather not had to drive so much.