Day 3. 8:34 pm. In the car driving from dinner at The Country Kitchen in Belgrade, MT on our way to Missoula. We’re actually going to make it to our hotel BEFORE midnight tonight, which excites us to no end! Another spectacularly awesome day.
The entire day today was devoted to a power exploration of Yellowstone National Park. We started with a very difficult 8:00am group wake up following our 2am bedtime last night, but the kids were rewarded with La Quinta’s “world famous make-your-own malted Belgian waffles”. Damon and I have become vacation slave drivers much to the chagrin of the kids, but at the end of the (very long day) it is always worth it. We were showered, packed and ready to go by 9:38 (a new record).
Our single goal at Yellowstone was to make it to Old Faithful and see whatever else we could on the way. We stopped at other geysers, hot springs, craters, cauldrons, mud pots, kettles, etc.– basically a bunch of hot, steaming bubbling gunk in all different shapes, sizes and colors (see all vacation pictures on Picasa: http://picasaweb.google.com/donnaweinberg/AdventuresOfMonkeyHouse?authkey=Gv1sRgCNjf7I3an8-DNg# ) . Given our time constraints, we worried about all of the construction delays within the park, and missing Old Faithful and having to wait 90 minutes for the “show”. Luck was on our side and we breezed through all construction hold-ups and only had to wait 30 minutes for the geyser.
On Old Faithful – I question a society where literally thousands of people line up on bleachers surrounding a huge mound of steaming dirt and wait for hours for water to shoot out of it. And let us not forget how far people come to see it! By this afternoon’s count, we have found license plates from 43 states and most of the Canadian Provinces! Don’t get me wrong – it was really cool and we were 6 (Thorkey was with us) of those thousands.
We also saw a bunch of wildlife – a few elk, another buffalo (yawn) and the typical deer and prairie dogs.
Driving out of the park on our way to Belgrade, we took an incredibly scenic driving following a river. It started pouring rain, but with the bad came the good – we were rewarded with the most unbelievable rainbow(s) I have ever seen! We started with a single full rainbow, which then doubled – so two rainbows on top of each other. Then a few minutes later, a third one appeared – three full rainbows one on top of the other – you don’t see that every day! We spent 7 hours digging at the end of the rainbow looking for a pot of gold, but alas were unable to find it. Kidding. As I write this, Sydney pointed out another partial double-rainbow out our window!
Thorkey has been a rock-star traveler. The kids have forsaken their space, their laps and their pillows all for the comfort of the dog. She rides like a princess either on someone’s lap or atop her throne of pillows in the back seat gazing out of the back windows. The trip would not be the same without her! We will miss her so much when we have to leave her in Missoula for the week L
Quote of the day (Sydney) - “Ewww, Lauren, where did you pull that out of”
Lauren would also like the world to know that she is very excited to have just gotten her first bloody nose in the car.
No comments:
Post a Comment