There is Beauty all around...

When in Yellowstone!

Day 1 June 24th 2010

So after 9 years of trying to convince Kevin we needed a family vacation he thought.. hmm I guess Shareen's right (well duh) so off we headed to Yellowstone National Park. This is a vacation Kev and I thought our family would all enjoy. And we really, really, did. Rod, Jennie, Cassidy, and Cody joined us which made for a fun trip.

First stop. Rexburg Idaho to BEAR WORLD. Hadlie, Tyson, and Davis have been to Yellowstone with grandma and grandpa Carter a few years back but were just as excited to go again. Bear world is just that extra bonus of fun wild life to see and touch.

When you drive through you have to keep your windows up at ALL TIMES, no honking, and animals always have the right of way (i.e. when there in the road you wait...until they move) So pics are taken from inside the car obviously. Just driving through and being so close is a way fun experience. We seen grizzly bears, elk, a WHITE elk which is rare and awesome, some deer, wolfs, and my all time FAV and love......

A MOOSE! I love moose. I love how big they are. Little dopey looking? Yes. But i am so infatuated with them. So he's not in the "wild" well close enough with the exception of hunting one, in which i haven't gotten that chance either so this will have to do.

Inside the park they have a petting zoo which is fun for the kids. You cant pet the baby bears but they still were fun to watch interact with each other.

We all were able to pet or feed the deer. Funny thing is with the exception of the deer i think we have or have had all these animals there were to pet. But just like someone else's toys these animals seemed to be more fun.

So i was having fun too.

Davis made me laugh so hard. He has chickens and gathers eggs daily. Yet he wanted a pic holding these chicken eggs soooo bad!

They have a few little kid rides the kids rode for a bit before we left. Then we ended up leaving Bear World with 4 bears of our own.

We stayed at the Gray Wolf Inn and right across from the Hotel was the Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center. What a cool place. They had fun exhibits to look at and learn about Bears and Wolf. Then you got to go in and watch the Bears and Wolfs.

The cool thing about this center is these bear and wolfs are in cages but are still wild with no human contact. They no when the door goes up they go out and eat and when they come up again they go back inside on there own time. It can take quiet awhile at times to get the bears back in.

Bears are so amazing to me. Tyson's favorite animal is a bear so he was very excited and intrigued by these bears. We could have watched them forever.

This bear tried forever to get this "treat" down and finally got it.

The kids got to participate in a program called Keeper Kids. They were able to be taught about the bears and learn interesting facts. Then they got to go in with there own bucket of food and hide it for the bears to come out and find and eat. It was SO COOL. They actually had to dodge the bears and hide from them..O.K. so i exhagurated a bit. The bears are NOT in there. But they do have to hide the food hard so the berars have a challenge looking for there food. The kids all LOVED this and I am so glad they got a ahance to do it.

The kids hiding the food....

The bears finding the food.

We even got caught in a bear trap. Very Scary! If you cant tell.

Day 2... into the park we go.

First thing we saw was a Bald eagle. It was so neat. You will hear this and similar expression often because quiet frankly i was just in awe at the beauty around us that I, along with my family thoroughly enjoy to be around.

We spent most of day 2 enjoying the geysers, mud pots, and waterfalls. Lots of hiking but beautiful things to see so well worth it.

Our earth is truly AMAZING! The things it naturally does...WOWZAS!

The waterfalls were breath taking and HUGE! I had to chuckle a bit because Kev was terrified of the kids being within 20 ft of the railing i swear! He kept saying "Shar I can save you guys in most situations but if they go over there I cant do a thing" It was actually kinda cute but i had to laugh too.

We were all lucky to get this close :)

This sums up the feeling after a long day. What cute boys!

At the end of a long day we were heading back into West Yellowstone to eat and saw a traffic jam. Kev knew it was a bear...and he was right. Now because of a park ranger directing traffic and trying to attempt "crowd control" this is the best shot i got. though we couldn't see it very well we still saw it and that was really a fun way to end the night.

O buffalo..What can I say..buffs, buffs, buffs EVERYWHERE a BUFF! Not to interesting after the hundredth time when really all you want to see i s a bear... or even better a MOOSE!

When they crossed the road right in front of the car the kids (o.k. and Kev and I) thought that was a bit fun. It happened 3 times.

Day 3... We seen lots of Elk. Bull and cow elk were in lots of the fields.

Then we saw 2 Big Horn Sheep. They were very hard to see and very far up. Again AMAZING.

We saw 2 coyotes off the road.

We went to the classic good Old Faithful. We got there just in time to see it erupt. Say it with me.. AMAZING!

Then off to Fishing Bridge. This bridge holds alot of memories for Kevin. They would come here with his grandpa Brown when they were little and camp. Way, way, way, back in the day youcould fish and there would be hundreds of fishing poles lined up touching one with another and everyone catching fish. You cant fish here anymore at all but he loves to tell the kids stories of back in the day when they camped with grandpa Brown. The kids enjoy the stories. I enjoy them too. Grandpa Brown was an amazing man. And he made wonderful memories with his grandkids here at Yellowstone.

That night after a long day of NOT seeing any bear Kev darts off the road saying grab your camera its a bear i swear its a bear. I was in a frantic matter grabbing for my cameras and so excited about some bear I couldnt even see. Then Hadlie yells i see it too. Our family was so excited to finally get to see and watch this bear.

Yes it was a bit far away but still we say a bear in the WILD! How cool is that! Since this was our first bear we got to watch we stayed for awhile. It was a fun time to have spotted (well Kev)then sit and watch this bear. The kids loved it. Tys was kind of a little extra excited:)

Day 4...Heading home was a bitter sweet. I think i can speak for all of us when i say we could have used a few more days to see more of this beautiful world we live in. And take in a few more bears.

Driving through the park one last time we again seen this grizzly. Same one or differnt who knows but this time it was closer.

Binocs in hand Kev and Cole were doing some very serious spotting on this bear.

It even crossed through the water which was really fun to see and watch it as it got closer.

This bear got close enought to the road that we thought it would cross. So many people were stopped watching this bear. Lots of people = Park Rangers. So everyone had to get in there cars and obviously keep there distance. Kev got close enough to take some good pics though.

We could have been happy with this but our luck got even better. We seen this cute littel baby grizzly on our side of the road so we were able to slow down look and take some cute pics and video of this bear and all of its cuteness.

We had the best vacation ever. O.k. so it was our first but a great one at that. We seen most everything but a wolf and a moose (need to take a minute to dry my tears) and a few other varmits but seeing the bears and other animals were great!

Leaving we drove through Grand Tetons National park. And i once again was in love with these gorgeous mountains! Yes ours are beautiful too but come on look at these.