Vacay Day 3 ~ Heading to Yellowstone

Let's see .. where did I leave off? Oh yeah. The Thomasons had just found out that the transmission was blown on their truck and they were unsure of what their plans were going to be.

I hadn't explained what we were doing at that time. We had found a little state park with campsites. It was one of those that has no facilities at all .. you just pull in and put your money in a locked box. We spent the night there with the trains, remember?

The next day, while we were waiting on the Thomason's plans, we tried to occupy ourselves. We were camped right next to a flowing spring with a rope swing. So, the kids rode it. Well, Dawson did anyway.

Then we played on the playground. Yes, I said "we". What do you do when life gets you down? Just keep swinging, just keep swinging. (That's from Finding Nemo, if you haven't seen it.)

And, you climb giant rock sculptures.

After we had all of the fun we could find at the state campground, we packed up our pop-up and headed to Yellowstone.

It was, in my opinion, the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen in my life!

We drove up the mountain through Big Horn National Forest. Breathtaking!! Seriously! Going over the pass presented us with the most amazing canyons and flowing rivers. I have never enjoyed time in a car as much as I did there. Photographs cannot even begin to paint the picture of those mountains! It's impossible to portray a 3-D image like that with a 2-D photograph.

After the pass we headed toward Cody, Wyoming. It's the neatest little cowboy town and I wish we could have stayed there! There seemed to be so much to do! We were planning to come back through and stay a night, but then we hit the Grand Tetons and changed our mind. More on that later.

Here is the main street in Cody with the mountains behind it. Wow, to wake up to that every morning! It would even make running errands enjoyable!

We stopped in Cody briefly to eat at Wendy's, and Brynne had one of her acid tummy aches. That was not pleasant! Because all of our medications were in the pop-up, I had to unhook from it and drive to the nearest grocery store to get her some Maalox. I fed it to her right there in the cart. She got to feeling better and we continued our trip toward Yellowstone.

We got to drive through some mountain tunnels. The little guys loved that!

We finally arrived in Yellowstone that evening. I know that I am going to sound completely un-American when I say this, but it was a disappointment, especially after what we had just seen through Big Horn and Cody. We trudged on and got to our campsite right at dark. Rick started putting up the pop-up and we realized that even though we were across from the bathrooms, there were no showers. We hadn't had one in a couple of days. Yuck! That, and the fact that it was COOOOOLLLLDDD started our time off in Yellowstone on a sour note. We bundled up and hit the sack.