Almanza Announcements: July 2011

We took a trip to Yellowstone National Park. It was just the 5 of us, Austin stayed behind at his Kenny Dad's house because he had was starting football that week and didn't want to miss his first practices. He was missed! After hearing about our trip and seeing our pictures he said that he definitely does not want to miss our trip next year! Yay! We left on Saturday the 30th and headed toward Idaho. Funny story, we had Ashton, ID set in our GPS and were on our way. We stopped at a rest stop a little ways before Pocatello, we had lunch, did bathroom breaks, changed diapers, we were there for a little while so we let Abby sit in the front seat of the car and play. She was playing with our phones, the GPS, and whatever else she could find. It was finally time to get back on the road, we hopped back on the freeway and did as the GPS was telling us to. Before we knew it, we no longer saw signs saying Idaho Falls...so many miles, we now were seeing signs that said Twin Falls...so many miles. Suddenly I realized this was THE WRONG WAY!!!! Yikes, we had driven about 25 min west instead of North, argghhh! U-TURN! Lesson learned about not checking the GPS after children have played with it, or even just solely relying on the GPS. OOPS!
Anyway, we arrived in Ashton, ID around 4:30 pm. We drove around the cute little town, went and saw my Great Grandparents graveside and then headed toward Warm River to feed the fish. However, it wasn't warm river that I was thinking of, it was Big Springs.
We stayed at Pond's Lodge in Island Park, ID which is about 30 min outside of Yellowstone National Park. The next morning we got up and were out the door by 10:00 and off we were to Big Springs. I was really excited to share some of my childhood memories with my Hubby and the Kiddos. First, we walked the trail up to Johnny Sacks Cabin. (if you click on the link it will tell you all about the cabin)

When we were done looking at the cabin we went across the street to the bridge to see and feed the fish. The water in the river was so amazingly clear and beautiful! There are springs here that come up from the ground and this is where the water begins, so it is so fresh and clean and then it heads down and eventually runs into the Snake River. Unfortunately there were hardly any fish for us to see. Mostly seagulls eating the fish food and bread that people were trying to throw to the fish.

Time to go to Yellowstone!

We stopped and walked around Lower, Midway, & Upper Geyser Basins.

The kids seemed to enjoy it with the exception of Sebastian who was just being a pill! We had to take Abby out of her stroller and let her walk so we could put the stinker in the stroller since he wasn't cooperating..

But we weren't going to let that stop us, so we just kept on going...

Next, we decided it was best to stop for a picnic and maybe Sebastian would cheer up a bit and enjoy our adventures..

He munched his sandwich and soon became playful and was happy again. In fact, he was even posing for the camera and being quite the little ham..

Time for more exploring..

The Midway Geyser Basin was fun and exciting. Here Vinnie and the boys are testing the temperature of the river because the hot springs run off into the river. It wasn't too warm but it certainly wasn't freezing. This is where the Grand Prismatic Spring is which is the largest hot spring in the United States. The colors of it were amazing, that is when the wind would stop blowing long enough for the steam to settle down for us to see it. There is a big boardwalk that walks around several other hot springs before getting to the Prismatic, as you walk along the steam is coming up from all of these springs and it is so warm but when the wind would stop for a minute and the steam would settle it would suddenly feel chilly because your body would get use to the heat. Gabe loved this and thought it was "so exciting".

Next stop...

We had about a 45 minute wait for Old Faithful to erupt. The kids did pretty well entertaining themselves while we waited.

Sebastian found a bug to watch...

Abby joined him, and Gabe played on his iPhone..

There she goes!

Sebastian is being a little stinker again and wanting to do his own thing...

Now we are off to the Mud Volcano..it was starting to get a bit late and the temperature was cooling off a bit so we needed to hurry up just a bit so we could get back to our cabin in time for dinner and bedtime.