OK July Fourth: The wrath of mother nature.

Another night of freezing cold in the tent, but we did get up and get moving. We have decided to head to Grand Teton National Park, which is possible after driving through Yellowstone. We're not sure how long the drive will be, but that is the plan.

The drive was very difficult! There were mountain roads under construction, which was pretty stressful. We did see Elk in the water and Bison in the road everywhere, which was amazing! The drive is what killed us. The construction part of the drive was gravel roads on twisting turning crazy roads. Hopefully you get the picture, just a little hairy. Much longer than we thought to get there, was like over two hours.

The park itself was fabulous! The Grand Teton mountain itself is 13K feet high and per the park service "The abrupt vertical rise of the jagged Teton Range contrasts with the horizontal sage-covered valley and glacial lakes at their base, creating world-renowned scenery that attracts nearly four million visitors per year." I couldn't have said it better myself. The dark clouds are coming, again, however.

We decide not to keep driving to Jackson Hole, which is supposed to be a fabulous town. We have to get back for fireworks. On the way back, as you'll see from pictures, the weather starts getting bad, and we're high up in the mountain roads. I could swear I see snow on cars windshields driving past me going the other way. Sure enough, around the next bend there is SERIOUS snow, like an inch or more slushing all over the road. Friggn snow on the 4th of July! Joy and I both lose it, we're tired and its making driving miserable. People all around us were snapping pictures out of their windows and stopping and touching the snow. Nobody can believe it.

We continued down towards Yellowstone again, and saw a big patch of cars stopped. This is usually the sign you get when animals are near the road. Sure enough, its a BEAR! Joy says its a Grissly, because it is brown and had a hunch on its back or something. This was awesome to see a bear, folks all around town have everything about bears in their shops, on their shirts, etc etc. It is "bear country" so its cool to see a bear. Good stuff there.

So we did get back to camp, finally, and had dinner outside. This was a victory, because most other cooking outside has been rained out. We did find puddles in the tent, however, making our mood a little sour. We pulled ouselves together and drove into West Yellowstone (just a few miles from camp) and drove into a field next to the main road and watched fireworks. That was worth it! All the kids said "it was the best 4th of July ever!" We watched from the back of the van, sitting in lawn chairs under the Montana sky, full moon and plenty of our closest friends.

It is hard to describe the range of emotions on this day, because we did too much, and stressed ourselves out. The good news is that it ended up fabulous, with great moods during and after fireworks. The wet and cold camping might have to stop, we're trying to decide if its worth it to continue in the tent. We made it a week, which feels like a huge accomplishment.