Yellowstone - Day 12

We drove to the north side of Yellowstone today. I didn't realize how big this park is. It takes a really long time to get anywhere. We came to a crawl at one point and I thought it might be road construction, but it turned out to be a bison walking on the side of the road. People come to a standstill when they see any kind of wildlife. By the time we got to Mammoth the boys were hungry, so we ate lunch and then went on our walk around the hot springs. Jack was really concerned about the temperature of the water and what would happen to you if you fell in. He had a million questions. I was happy to see that he was so interested. We drove to a few waterfalls and the boys were happy that they didn't have to hike to see them. As we continued on our drive we saw about 50 people gathered on the side of the road looking down the mountain. There were two park rangers, so Brad rolled down his window and asked one of them what everyone was looking at. Let's just say Matthew got his wish of finally seeing a bear. Luckily it was pretty far away and it was sleeping on top of an elk that it had killed for his dinner. A woman was nice enough to let us look through her binoculars so we could see the bear closer. Matthew couldn't stop talking about the bear and he can't wait to tell his friends about seeing it. Make sure to check out the picture of the bear in the photo section (it's basically a big ball of fur). There are a lot of fallen and dead trees in Yellowstone. At one point Brad said, "it's the land of the sticks." Jack said, "what do you mean the land of the sticks?" So Brad told him to look up and tell him what he saw. Jack replied, "naked trees." I love seeing how my kids view the world. They always have an interesting perspective.

Up until Yellowstone we have been really lucky to avoid mosquitoes, but last night when we got out of our car we got attacked. They were everywhere. Tonight wasn't nearly as bad, but I managed to get at least one new bite and we were killing them in our car after we had dinner. When we got back to the hotel we let the boys swim in the indoor pool for an hour and a half before bed. Those two are fish. They would stay in the pool all day if you let them.