Yellowstone Day 3 & 4

Tuesday we finally woke up to sunshine.  We were very excited about that.  We decided to take the route to Old Faithful today.

On the way we stopped at Firehole Falls, and Midway Geyser Basin.  We saw the largest hot springs in Yellowstone which gives off steam of different colors.  We also stopped at Yellowstone Lake, which is huge, after Old Faithful.  On the way home we hit the Mud Volcano and Dragon's Mouth, (no pictures, it was raining) while we drove through Hayden Valley.

Once home we went out to eat at The Three Bears.  The kids got a kick out of that and then swam again and went to bed.

Wednesday we took the Northern route determined to see the illusive bears.  We stopped along the way at interesting points.  We saw Mammoth Hot Springs Terrace which were dried up so they weren't very exciting.  We went to park headquarters and got an unofficial tour.  The kids got to learn about all the different jobs their are in the park.  They all want to work there when they get older.  Halfway through our drive we ran into a traffic jam on the road.  We were trying to see what the cause of it was and there were two black bear cubs in the tree playing.  Yea!  We had found the bears.  I asked the park ranger where the mama bear was and he said she was down in the brush laying down.  That's why he was there, to make sure none of us went to find the mother bear.

Lily lost her first tooth when we stopped for lunch at Tower Falls.  We hike down to the river and let the kids go wading in it.  On the way out of the park I thought I had seen something in a tree and so I had Damon pull over.  It was another (or maybe the same) bald eagle.  We were the only ones there to see it.  That was pretty cool.  They really are beautiful birds.  When we got back to civilization we visited the Grizzly and Wolf Center that was right across the street from our hotel.  We saw bears and wolves up close and learned a lot about them.

That night we didn't have a good dinner experience which made us all grumpy.  We went back to our room, packed and went to bed.  We knew we had a long day ahead of us the next day.