How One Child's Desire for Ice Cream Turned Into a Family Vacation

Let me just begin by saying that I totally should have included this trip in my last post about How I Spent My Summer Vacation.  After I wrote that post I kept thinking there was one more thing I was missing.  After a few days of pondering on it, I finally realized that it was only our biggest trip of the year! Duh! I thought about revising my last post, but I never really got around to it.  And after all, it was our big trip, so really it deserves a post all of it's own.  

For several months Ryan had been begging us to go to Yellowstone.  He kept saying that we had promised him that we would take him to Yellowstone this year.  I don't ever remember having a conversation like that, but kept telling him that we could probably go sometime.  Well, turns out that Greg had a week of vacation time scheduled in September and we had never really planned how we were going to use it.  Being the "last minute" kind of people we are, we started looking into our options about a week before the scheduled time off.  We looked at a couple of our favorite Park City get away places, but they were booked.  We looked at our favorite San Diego beach condos, but they were booked as well.  We thought about going to Disneyland, but weren't sure we were up to the task with a 1-year-old.  Finally we remembered Ryan's desire to go to Yellowstone and figured we should do it.  Neither Greg or I had been there since we were teenagers.  

So we rented this fun little cabin in Island Park where we stayed for a few nights.

Upon the first 5 minutes of driving into the actual park, we encountered this bull elk.

Also remember that I have a crappy little camera with barely any zoom, so when you see a picture like this, it means that we were impressively close. 

I could have petted this guy from the car window, if I was brave.  But I'm not.  

There were some stupid brave people who got out of their cars and were taking pictures standing right next to the buffalo.  I was hoping to see a good goring, but all I got was disappointment.

We also saw plenty of deer, but that's not too exciting since we find them in our backyard several times a year. And we saw a couple of bald eagles as well.  The kids were really hoping to see bears and wolves, but that didn't happen.

We did, however, see lots of beautiful scenery.  

A view of the upper falls as we hiked down to the lower falls.

Standing at the top of the lower falls looking down.

Lower falls from a distance.  It was quite dark and rainy on the day I took these pictures.  I wish it had been sunny because I'm sure the colors would have been much more impressive.  But it was still beautiful.

And here we all are at Artist's Point - soaking wet from all the rain.

And at Inspiration Point.

Hiking to The Artist's Paintpots.

Ryan really wanted his picture taken with this bird.

Fortunately we finally got one sunny day.  

It is about this time that Ryan starts getting annoyed and asks "Are we going to be outside the whole time?"

Me:  Yes

Ryan:  What? You never told me that we were going to be outside!

Me:  Of course we're going to be outside.  Yellowstone is outside.

Ryan:  No it's not!

Me:  Yes it is.  What do you think Yellowstone is?

Ryan:  It's where you go to get ice cream and it's inside!

Me:  Ooooohhhhh, did you mean you wanted to go to Coldstone?

Ryan:  Is that where the ice cream is?

Me:  Yes.

Ryan:  Then yes.

Me:  Well, we're not going there today.  We came to Yellowstone because this is where you said you wanted to go.  

The next few hours were followed by much grumpiness and complaining about what a dumb vacation this was, and how much he hates being outside.  We did manage to make it over to the beautiful Old Faithful Inn and get some ice cream there.  And of course Ryan took about 3 tiny bites of his and declared himself full.  There is no pleasing that child.

Anyway, lots more lovely things to see...

The Lion Geyser makes a roaring sound when it erupts.

 Castle Geyser

Fountain Paint Pots.

 Grand Prismatic Spring

Opal Pool

Dylan is about to jump right out of his stroller.  Unfortunately this just isn't the kind of place you can let clumsy little toddlers run around at.  But once we found a safe place we let him run free and he made the most of it.

This one makes me laugh every time I see it.    

We saw Old Faithful, and Ryan still being in a bad mood about the whole Coldstone/Yellowstone misunderstanding had to make lots of loud and snarky comments during the whole eruption - such as "boooooorrrrring!" and "Show's over, people!" as it was winding down.  

Driving off into the sunset as we leave the park.

We had a really fun time and even Ryan eventually came around and agreed that he would like to go back again.