Day 2 Follies

Day 2 was full of follies. I woke up with a migraine because we didn’t have the RV leveled properly and the way we were sleeping in the bed caused our feet to be much higher than our heads! But I had to shake that one off because I had to do a phone interview for a job! Matt took the kids out to the Grant visitor center while I did that. Katie had a long conversation with the Ranger about what would happen if the Grizzlies that were frequenting our campground ate her.
We rushed back to the visitor center after lunch in the RV to see a Ranger talk on all the wildlife in the park and the best place to see them. It ended up being about ground squirrels and rodents. Not what WE want to see!
Our laundry was starting to pile up so while I went to the laundry center Matt was going to take the kids on a boat cruise on the lake. Well, he took a wrong turn and instead of going the 20 miles to Bridge Bay all of the sudden he was at Old Faithful! So, they decided to just go see Old Faithful instead, even though we had already paid for the boat cruise. They lucked out, it was just about to go off (it goes off every 90 minutes) but Matt was on the phone about the broken down 4Runner and when they turned around to walk towards the geyser, it was just finishing up. J But they walked around and saw some of the many other geysers there in the basin and even saw Castle go off which only goes off every 20 hours or so!
I, on the other hand, got sunburned waiting for them because if I stood in the shade the skeeters would have devoured me! J That night we cooked steaks and potatoes out on the grill for a nice dinner.
Yesterday (Tuesday), we slept in a little and then ventured off to Old Faithful to really see it this time! SO MANY people! We did get to see it. AND Kyle finally found his Yellowstone wallet that we have been looking EVERYWHERE for! Just as I was taking pictures of Old Faithful going off, my camera battery went dead. Ugh, the day had just begun for picture taking! I had just put that battery in too. Oh well.
From there, we ventured North stopping at all the little geyser, paint pot, and what not basins along the way. All of which involved half to 1 mile loop walks around on the boardwalks out in the sun to see the features. My children aren’t too fond of getting hot and thirsty, but they enjoyed seeing the neat bubbling mud and steaming holes in the ground. That is until we got to one of the last……Now, I LOVE Yellowstone National Park, the scientist in me is fascinated by the super volcano and all its features, and I appreciate all the warnings they give you at each location for dangers in the area due to the thermal activity, wildlife dangers, etc. so that they can keep it as wild and natural as possible, BUT at this particular location (Artist Paint Pots) WE GOT TAKEN! They left a few of the dangers out! It said it was a third of a mile to the site and given that it was late in the afternoon, early in the evening, against my better judgement, we started the trek. We quickly realized that there were skeeters swarming us, but we trekked on. By the time we got to the site we realized that not only were we going to have to fight off HUGE blood sucking swarms of skeeters but we would have hike up a mountain to see the features. Katie was already freaking out because of the “moschitos” and worried they would drink all of her blood and give her some horrible disease and I don’t think she had stopped running the whole way. So she and I walked over a short distance to at least see something and all it was was dried mud! We high tailed it back to the car! But the three guys went ahead up the mountain. Matt said that Kyle ran the whole way back and that if it had been the great train race, he would have set records! And of course, that caused him to have a bloody nose in the car and all I had to give him was a receipt I had in my purse! WE ARE TAKING BUG SPRAY TODAY!
As we got closer to camp last at about 11:30pm we saw lots of downed trees and leaves from a storm and it was raining. OH NO! We had left the windows open in the RV! Luckily, it was still standing and there was minor water that made it’s way in. We crashed for the night.