Day 2 -- July 2

Touring Yellowstone National Park and driving to Cody, WY. We entered at West Yellowstone at 10:00am, and through sheer will power managed to be to Cody at 5:15pm. (Our targets were 8:00am and 4:00pm..so we could visit the Buffalo Bill Museam with 2 hours to tour it...instead we only toured for 45 min.)

It was so difficult to only limit ourselves to a few of the choices of thermal features and byways. But we did an acceptable job. And the enthusiasm of our children exceeded my expectations! From the first site of steam and boiling water, their interest was captured. And despite the crowds and long drives, it lasted pretty well throughout the day!

Our first time using the East Entrance of Yellowstone! (As an exit.) What an incredible mountain pass! The snow was piled high, but melting into torrents of water. Possibly the warmest day up there so far this year.

Yellowstone Lake was at flood stage for sure! And the Yellowstone River...entire stands of timber were surrounded by water. There was still plenty of snow, even at the Fishing Bridge store, for our boys to have fun with it.

We arrived at Old Faithful about 5 minutes before it went off! Unfortunately, Malauna missed most of the eruption--potty break.

[panoramic picture to go here]

Grand Prismatic Spring was beautiful. It was really cool to see mist colored blue and red blow off the spring.

Overheard in the park: [20-something male] "Dude, that kid gets the prize for the best shirt of the day. Lego starwars with some characters."



Artist Point on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was open. (The previous two times we've been to Yellowstone, in 2002 and 2007, it was closed.) Here we ran into Rahim and his wife (Ryan knows him from Micron)! We saw them in May at Shoshone Falls, also.


The Buffalo Bill Historical Center is neat, if you happen to like Westerns, guns, and Show Business (at least that is what we saw of it, there were 4 more galleries to walk through).