Day 21 & 22: Yellowstone National Park

We woke up to a nice surprise our first morning in Yellowstone.  We had a puppy with an upset tummy and she had pooped on the floor.  I had already cleaned it up by the time everyone got up but we still smelled it.  When Kevin went to pull back the curtains from the dashboard, he found a huge pile of poop and pee on the dashboard right in front of his seat!  There was urine on his work book and even after cleaning it, when the sun comes in the window and warms it just right, the smell is still in the air!
After a rough start to the morning, we headed in to Yellowstone.   Our plan--go see Old Faithful.  When we arrived at Old Faithful, it had just erupted so we missed it.  We decided to walk around, check out the visitors center, get some ice cream and come back 10 minutes before it erupted next.  Guess what?  It erupted early so we missed it again. At this point, the kids were ready to bag it but I thought what a shame it would be to come all the way here and miss it so we messed around another hour or so and made sure to be back in time to see it.  Of course it was 15 minutes late but it was really cool and I'm happy we stayed!  Here's what we saw:

We also saw some other thermals--steam coming right out of the ground--and some hot springs and mud pools.  It was very interesting to see:

As for wildlife, we saw a bison, elk, and moose the first day but the next day, on the way to Cody, Wyoming, we saw herds of bison!   It was so cool--there must have been hundreds!  There were  a couple blocking the road and the rangers had to guide them off the road so traffic could resume.  Lulu and Sammi were having a fit to get to those bison!  I don't know what they would have done since Lulu is afraid of everything but it was funny to watch!

Got to Cody yesterday--I'll fill you in on that in the next post!  Thanks for traveling along with us!