"Lellowstone"

Sadie is impressively good at saying her "l" sound. So good, in fact, that Yellowstone is pronounced "Lellowstone" in her cute Sadie-talk. I guess she figured "l" was easier to say than "y"??

This trip was a long time coming. Kevin is used to annual trips and we didn't go last year for obvious pregnancy-related reasons. So he was antsy, to say the least. Such a kid at heart!

The kiddos did okay. Nothing great, unfortunately. It's a hard vacation to take with a 10-month old who has just learned to crawl and who doesn't love her car seat. And Sadie was kind of ho-hum about the whole experience. She would briefly get excited about the few animals that were close enough for her to see, but then it was back to long, long car rides all day. I can't blame her for not being overenthusiastic about the whole deal. She was also running a very mild fever for a couple of the days, which only made her a bit more grouchy than she normally would have been.

To break up the drive, we stayed in Jackson the first night. We've decided that we really love Jackson. It's a pretty fun little town. Not to mention they have a barbeque place there that's AMAZING. (Bubbas, in case you were wondering.)

Next to the antler arch in Jackson

The Tetons. Or part of them, anyways. Love these mountains, but they're always under cloud cover it seems like.

The drive was long. As in, 1100 total miles-long. I had bags full of stuff to keep S and E entertained; sometimes it worked, sometimes... not so much.


Princess music and a cookie. One of our many entertainment go-tos.



Happy moment! Unfortunately, there aren't nearly as many entertainment options for a rear-facing 10-month old. Poor kid.

We made Old Faithful one of our first stops inside the park. After getting Sadie all psyched up to see the water spraying out of the ground, we missed it by 5 minutes. Go figure. It only erupts every 90 minutes, so we didn't wait around to see it again. Thus, the pictures in front of the wimpy steam...

Sadie and me at Old Faithful.

Sadie in front of the not-so-erupting Old Faithful. She was still really excited about it. Guess she didn't know what she was missing. :)

Annnnd...Ellie got her first taste of Yellowstone's famous fudgesicles. Spoiled kid. :)

And we can't forget the rest of the traditional Yellowstone activities:

Picnic meals. In the cold, usually.

Cold weather usually meant sitting in Kevin's parent's suburban during some meals. Ellie thought this was great fun.

Checking out the far-away animals in the spotting scope.

Diligently searching for those animals.

All that searching paid off, though. Guess how many bears Kevin saw? You'll never guess. :)

Thirty-three!

Kevin wanted to make sure I emphasized that that's thirty-three separate bears - no duplicates. Pretty impressive, isn't it? It's his new record. Since he's been going since he was three, that tells you something. (I should add this disclaimer, though - most of those bears were miles and miles away, only seen through binoculars or the spotting scope.)

On the other hand, we saw this dude pacing around the campground right by where we were eating lunch. No spotting scopes needed here - he was just yards away:


Menacing looking, isn't he? Don't worry, we were standing behind the car. :)


And we can't forget the rest of the animal sightings. This is, after all, the whole reason we go.

Clockwise: moose, big horn sheep ewes, buffalo (who seemed to be hilariously stuck on that barricade), and a deer.



We also drove through towering snow (that's really how deep it was up there, no drifting included - amazing!)

Wildflowers. They're few and far between in Yellowstone, so I grabbed some shots of these right away.

And.. that's it. See ya next year, "Lellowstone!"