Yellowstone

We made it to Missoula after a very long day driving from Washington. The next day we decided that since we were staying near the West Entrance of Yellowstone, that we would enter through the North Entrance, through the Roosevelt Arch, since we likely wouldn't be up that way again. The drive was gorgeous and we were so excited to enter the park, I didn't take a single picture of the Arch, the sign, nothing.

Sadly, there's one more reason we don't have pictures of the first few days... a terrible digital accident resulted in the loss of the pictures from the first 3 days (NEVER let my twins play with your camera. EVER.). So, you'll just have to imagine what the following looked like:

Within minutes of entering the park we saw a grizzly bear cross the road. He was the first of 4 wild grizzlies we saw (I do have photos of the last, for an upcoming post.). We also saw Bison, Elk, Coyotes, a fox, Bald Eagles and Osprey over the first few days. We got settled at Madison Campground, and attended a Ranger talk. The next day, we needed supplies, so we headed over to West Yellowstone (outside the park). After spending way woo much time and money in a book store, we went to the Grizzly Discovery Center. They have both Grizzly Bears and Wolves, sort of like a tiny zoo, with a museum. We had great fun there, and learned a lot about the Grizzlies and Wolves of Yellowstone. The girls got to play games, and even got to go into the habitat to hide food for the bears. Seriously.

The next day we spent at the Canyon Visitor's Center, learning about the volcanic caldera and the glaciers. We went on a short hike to Tower Falls, before heading up to Roosevelt Corral for our Chuckwagon Dinner. We rode out to a valley on a covered wagon and had a great steak dinner. The Percheron horses were incredible, and we learned that they buy them from the Amish. We learned more about the history of Yellowstone and had a great time.

On Saturday we learned the the park was free that weekend, so we looked around for something off the path (so to speak) with less people. Everyone voted to climb Mt Washburn, in hopes of seeing Big Horn Sheep. We parked at the trail head and hiked up. This hike is listed in the "Best Easy Day Hikes of Yellowstone" book. It seemed straight up the mountain to me. About halfway up, two male Bison popped up from a meadow and began walking up the trail. We were content to follow several hundred feet back, but then they decided they needed a rest and lay down right across the trail. We have been telling the girls to stay on the trail, we never leave the trail, always stay on marked trail. There is one exception: if bison are laying on your trail, you may go around. We all made it to the top of Mt Washburn (10,243 ft, tyvm), to a lookout tower there, with glorious 360 views of the entire park. It had rained a bit of the way up, but about halfway down, it really began to storm, and hail... a lot. We were soaked and miserable and cold. And the icing on the cake was when we got back to the car, I realized we weren't at the trail head. The road to the trail head was closed still (it will open later in summer) and we had hiked an extra 1.5 miles... each way. So our 6 mile hike was now a 9 mile hike. Yup.

So that was the first three days... and yep, not a picture to show for it. We all agreed though, we were there, it happened!