Day 7: Yellowstone, Day 2

We slept a little later today than yesterday because we were all exhausted. The kids played in the little playground at the RV park, but Luca skinned his leg pretty badly going up the wooden part to get to the slide. A few bandaids later he was okay.

On our way to Yellowstone we stopped to take pictures of a bizarre five-story wooden house with lots of balconies and several outdoor staircases on the top of a hill called the Smith Mansion. I had read about this place in a book called Atlas Obscura, a great book that lists all these unique and weird places to visit around the world. I didn't remember that this house was in Wyoming until I spotted it as we were driving to dinner last night. The builder, a man named Francis Lee Smith just kept building and building without any blueprints. According to an interview with his daughter I read, Smith salvaged pine wood from a wildfire to create the frame of the house. He built and built for twelve years before falling to his death at the age of 48 while working on one of the roofs in 1992. He got divorced in the middle of construction and apparently poured his sorrow into building the house. The house doesn't even have bedrooms, just a hot room where everyone could sleep in sleeping bags in the winter and a cold room where Smith would sleep in a giant swing that hung from the ceiling.

The woman we talked to at dinner last night said that there is still a person who watches over the property and has been told to shoot all trespassers. This may or may not be true

There is a Youtube video of it the Smith Mansion that you can watch, if you are interested. I would put the link here, but this website doesn't allow you to embed links. If you like quirky stuff like this, get yourself a copy of the book Atlas Obscura, an Explorer's Guide to the World's Hidden Wonders. There is an adult edition with hundreds of entries and a kids edition called Atlas Obscura, Explorer's Guide, the World's Most Adventurous Kid with just 100 entries. They also have a website listing thousands of interesting places.

Today there was a longer line to get in Yellowstone because we got there around 10:30 am, but it was still not that bad. We decided to go north today to try to find the animals. First we stopped at a place called the Mud Volcano. Boy, was it smelly. You can smell the sulphur from a pretty far distance. We saw a cool thing called Dragon's Mouth Spring whose opening did resemble the mouth of a dragon with steaming breath.

We took the trail up and around and down the mountain to see more bubbling mud and sulphur springs. All around the mountains were tons of dead fallen trees. We learned that there was a series of earthquakes in Yellowstone in 1978. The earthquakes didn't make the trees fall, but the earthquakes caused the ground to get so hot that the trees couldn't survive the 200 degree temperature.

After the Mud Volcano area we went to see the spectacular upper falls of Yellowstone. On the way we saw a bison really far away. It was so far away that we couldn't tell if it was a bison or a bear. We finally determined it was a bison by the way it was hanging its head. A little further on we saw dozens of bison but they were so far away they just looked like a bunch of brown spots.

We found easy parking at the upper falls, which we always appreciate with a 32-foot vehicle. We all found waterfall to be more impressive than Old Faithful. Then we went to see the canyons which were even more impressive, although slightly scary to look at with two six year-olds who love to climb anything they see.

We made lunch in the RV and ate a picnic table by the Canyon Lodge restaurant. The kids had spaghettios for the first time. Diego and Alex liked them and Nico and Luca did not.

We went to try to find the observation deck of the Lower Falls but we never actually found it. We also realized that it might have been a little too frightening with the boys. My dad and Ellie found a trail that got a little closer to the Lower Falls and went to explore. The rest of us got on the RV and played cards.

On the way out of the park we finally saw a bison just sitting on the side of the road as if he plopped there on purpose just so visitors could say they saw a bison. He was rolling in the dirt and sticking his tongue out and it was just awesome. After he rolled around in the dirt, he started to get up and he looked pretty mad. I was hanging out the window trying to take a photo and Nico got rather scared. I posted a video on my Facebook page (because it's not that easy to post videos on this site) and you can hear Nico saying "Is he going to kill us?"

We also saw another bison up close on a small hill on the other side of the car.

A few miles past that I spotted a bear just sitting on a small hill near the road. An actual bear! It all happened so fast and my dad couldn't slow down as we passed it so he decided to pull off to the side to park so we could run out and see it. Ellie, Nico, Luca, Alex and I ran out of the vehicle to get a closer look not realizing that all of the traffic had been stopped on either side to prevent people from getting near the bear. We were the closest vehicle to the bear who turned out to be with her cub, which is not the best time to be near a bear. All of a sudden, one of the park rangers yelled into her megaphone, "RV get back in your vehicle!" We ran pretty fast back inside. I got a quick photo of the bear from inside the RV, but I will forever in my mind remember the image of the bear sitting on the hill when all of a sudden her little cub stood up next to her.

We left the park very satisfied. My mom said she enjoyed today's visit better than yesterday's. I liked both days pretty equally because I loved the Grand Prismatic Spring so much.

We ate dinner at a beautiful little lodge called the Absaroka Mountain Lodge, a lodge dating back to the 1900s that is listed in the National Registry of Historic places and was once owned by Buffalo Bill Cody's grandson. We had seen the sign for the lodge on our drive on the way to the park but we didn't know if we could make it there with our RV. We ended up parking near the sign and walking about a half a mile to get to the lodge. It is a quaint lodge with 15 cabins on a little creek called the Gunbarrel Creek, which the boys played in while waiting for our food.

Ellie and I remarked how happy we were that every restaurant in Wyoming offers onion rings or fries. I did't even know I liked onion rings until this trip. My dad decided not to eat something fried because everything in the past few days has been fried. We shared the best molten lava chocolate cake for dessert.

When we got back to the RV park, we had another exciting moment. Another RV was parked in our spot. And not only that, it was just a trailer and the car was gone. We went to the front desk and they said that no one should be in our spot but us. They told us that they didn't think they had any more spots tonight and they might have to put us up in their hotel! Well, that was music to my ears, a hotel with real beds and a shower and maybe even a TV. And maybe we would be in three different rooms instead of all of us being in the same RV. Unfortunately, they realized that someone had left a day early and we were able to take that spot. We don't know what will happen tomorrow night.

Now it's time for bed. I brought all these books with me and tons of DVDs thinking we would have all this downtime at night. We never do. I even brought two bathing suits for each of my boys and even though almost every place we have been to has had a pool, we haven't had a chance to go swimming once.

My mom asked me today if I would ever want to do a trip on an RV like this again. It's hard to answer that question. This may be one of those once in a lifetime things. There are some things I love about the RV, but I sure do love going to a hotel room at the end of a long day of sightseeing. I would definitely want to explore this part of the US again, but I think I would want to stay in a hotel.