Day 6: Yellowstone

The adults woke up around 6:30 and the kids woke up around 7:15. We left for Yellowstone around 8, which wasn't too terrible considering we haven't left earlier than 10:30 any other day on this trip. We drove through winding roads surrounded on both sides by the most amazing rock formations. We got to Yellowstone about 9:15 and there were only a few cars in line in front of us. The couple we talked to at dinner last night made it seem like there were long lines to get in, but we hopefully avoided them by going on the early side.

Once you get in Yellowstone from the east gate, it's another hour and a half just to get to Old Faithful. I decided to start reading The Mystery of Yellowstone out loud to the kids. It's the same series as The Mystery of Mount Rushmore book which I paused reading because we are in Yellowstone now and aren't going back to Mount Rushmore until next week. In this book, the kids are looking for a mysterious treasure based on some clues they have found (how do they keep finding these clues?) while snowmobiling through Yellowstone (these are some lucky kids). Luca told me that my reading out loud was making him car sick. I told him that being read out loud to could not possibly cause him to be carsick and that it was probably that fact that he had been drawing, but he wasn't having it. So I had to stop reading and now we may never know what mystery is going to happen at Yellowstone. In the few short chapters we did read we learned that it was President Ulysses S. Grant who made Yellowstone a national park in 1872, the very first national park in the world.

In case you are wondering why the park is called Yellowstone, I found this info on the National Park Service website, "Yellowstone National Park is named after the Yellowstone River, the major river running through the park. According to French-Canadian trappers in the 1800s, they asked the name of the river from the Minnetaree tribe, who live in what is now eastern Montana. They responded 'Mi tse a-da-zi,' which literally translates as 'Rock Yellow River.' The trappers translated this into French as 'Roche Jaune" or 'Pierre Jaune.' In 1797, explorer-geographer David Thompson used the English translation—'Yellow Stone.' Lewis and Clark called the Yellowstone River by the French and English forms. Subsequent use formalized the name as 'Yellowstone.' "

We decided to go right to Old Faithful which performs its magic every 90 minutes or so. We made bets to see how long we would have to wait when we arrived. I guessed we would have to wait 56 minutes and Ellie guessed 61 minutes. We got there at 10:45 and the geyser action began at 11:49 so Ellie won that bet. Even though it was impressive, we were all a little underwhelmed. My dad said he watched Youtube videos of it and all the people were cheering and shouting and it wasn't like that at all. I'm still glad we got to see it, but I don't know if I would drive 23 hours out of my way to see it again.

We got in line to eat lunch in the Old Faithful cafeteria but since the hot dogs were $7.50 and you could only get the food to go anyway, I decided to just go back and make the kids hot dogs in the RV. My mom did get a BLT which was mostly just a B because there was hardly any tomato or lettuce on it. We found a picnic table in a wooded area near our RV and ate there. The boys found a log that served as a perfect seesaw.

The next stop was the Grand Prismatic Spring, which was the place I most wanted to see in Yellowstone. This did not disappoint at all. I think everyone else was equally as enchanted as I was. The sign said that the water was 160 degrees Fahrenheit You could feel the heat coming off the water. Then, out of nowhere, a cool breeze would come and blow the steam away.

The couple we met last night told us that the Grand Prismatic Spring might be a little scary to go to with the kids, but it wasn't too bad. Most of the area did not have railings so I wouldn't recommend it for little kids or kids who might be a flight risk, but it was okay for my kids. It doesn't seem that scary because the boardwalks are only about a foot of the ground. Also, the boardwalk is fairly far from the springs so if the kids were to fall, they would fall onto the rocks, which may or may not be super hot. The kids got a huge kick out of the signs all over Yellowstone showing a drawing of a kid putting his foot in the hot ground while his family looks on in horror. I know they shouldn't have found this so humorous, but it doesn't take much.

We took a lot of pictures of the prismatic spring before moving on to our last Yellowstone stop of the day, the West Thumb mud pots, a spectacular geyser basin bordered by Yellowstone Lake. A man walking by heard us talking about how Yellowstone was formed by a volcano and he told us that all of Yellowstone (all 3471 square miles) was made from the crater of the volcano. At West Thumb we also learned that otters make their homes there in winter months. For those of you who know about Diego's obsession with otters, you can only imagine how happy this made him. However, I don't think we'll ever make it back here in the winter. The roads are pretty winding and scary enough for me in the summer. Many of the roads are actually closed in the winter. There is about a 10 minute strip from the East Entrance to Yellowstone Lake that is pretty treacherous, especially in an RV.

Another thing we learned in the Mystery at Yellowstone is that people use to fish in Yellowstone Lake and take the fish hanging from their fishing poles and drop them in the West Thumb steaming water to cook them and then eat them on the spot. People aren't allowed to do that anymore.

I think we have all finally gotten in to the groove of being in the RV, but we still have our problems. Today a bottle of Cinch cleaner fell in this little spot between the kitchen sink and the oven. The problem was that if we expanded the slide outs, this bottle could get caught and probably make the whole slide out get stuck. We try to make sure everything is off the table and the counter every time we are about to move, but we always forget something, a cup of water, the Kleenex box, a bag of cookies. And then everything goes flying to the floor. One time a blanket fell out of the bunk above the driver's seat and fell on my dad's head while he was driving and that could have been very dangerous. So back to the bottle of Cinch (boy, that's an exciting start to a sentence), my dad found a stick outside and that didn't work. He had to take a hanger and open in up and reach down to get it. We are just lucky that we actually noticed it was down there.

One thing I learned today is that Alex thinks Mount Rushmore is called Rount Rushmore. Maybe it's time to go back to school. And while I'm on that subject, I do wish I could take the kids and travel around the country (or the world) with them, especially now that Chicago has announced full remote learning until November. The boys have learned so much about the history, geography and geology of the United States in just the past 5 days. They are also learning a lot about patience, flexibility, and how important it is to put the toilet seat down because if they don't things may fall out of the cupboards in the bathroom and into the toilet. And that's just disgusting.

My mom noticed today that we hardly saw any animals today except for a few ducks and a squirrel. Our goal tomorrow is to find some animals. `

On our way back to the RV park, we tried to find a place to eat dinner which proved to be rather difficult because the RV is so hard to maneuver that we couldn't get into any of the guest ranches between Yellowstone and our RV park. We ended up eating at the closest restaurant to our RV park, the Wapiti Saloon. It had a gorgeous outdoor area with picnic benches and an area for the kids to run around and play. The people at the table next to us were in the area before heading to the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally and were actually from a town 15 minutes from where my father grew up in Freeport, IL.

We were happily enjoying our drinks when all of a sudden it started to rain and got really windy flipping all our plates and cups in the air. Apparently, Wyoming is known for its wind. We went under an awning, but the rain went away in about 5 minutes and a beautiful rainbow appeared.

We had a nice waiter named Cameron who had only been working there for three days. The food wasn't great. The pizza reminded me of Chuck E. Cheese pizza but with a burnt crust and the Cajun Po' Boys had mozzarella cheese melted on the shrimp and no sauce at all. I asked Cameron if they had forgotten the remoulade sauce and he looked at me like I had three heads. I asked him if there was some mayo I could put on the sandwich and he never came back to our table again. I'm sure he had decided never go back to the table with the mean lady from Chicago who wanted her remoulade sauce. We had to hunt him down to get the check. I hate to be such a complainer but three of us got the Cajun Po Boys and I just don't understand why you would even put that on a menu that wasn't that big to begin with if you aren't going to try to make them Cajun. Fortunately, the sandwiches did come with onion petals which were pretty darn good.

When we got back I took the boys to take showers and talked to some people who gave us suggestions on how to find animals at Yellowstone. They said to drive to the upper and lower falls, look for a trail near the outhouse and we will find the bison. So we will attempt that tomorrow. The men also told us that Custer State Park in South Dakota, where we plan on going next week, is usually full of bison. However, due to the influx of motorcycles going through the park (those Sturgis rally goers are everywhere!) they herd the buffalo away so they are much harder to spot.

Back in the RV, I attempted unsuccessfully to upload my photos and entries to the travel blog. One thing I have learned about Wyoming it's that there is no cell/internet service. It's pretty frustrating but also kind of nice. I think I'm going to rename the state No Wifi-oming.