Road Trip - Day #4

Today's agenda was to drive from Great Falls, Montana to the entrance of North Yellowstone.  We decided to sleep in as long as the kids would let us.  Then we hit up the pool at the hotel.  Dustin had fond memories of this hotel while he was in high school - they would have all their proms here.  They have a huge indoor atrium and indoor pool.  Our hotel room had a sliding glass door that opened up right to the pool.  We had fun in the pool and hot tub until it was time to get ready to check out.

There were a few melt downs during the drive today.  Both kids were FIGHTING their naps.  We were only about 45 minutes from where our hotel was at and we stumbled upon this mining store.  So we stopped and decided to buy a bag of rocks to pan for some gems.  The kids actually enjoyed it more than we expected.  They liked being able to 'wash' the rocks and use tweezers.

Our haul was actually pretty good.  The store where we bought the bag of rocks went through our findings and categorized them.  We had about 20 carats of gems that were of no quality to make into jewelry and about 20 carats of gems that were pretty good!

After about an hour we hopped back into the car...and what happened when we were only 5 minutes from our hotel?  Both boys fell asleep.  Sigh....now what?

Well.....we just decided to start driving through parts of North Yellowstone!  We had about 2.5 hours before the sun was going to set.  Dustin and Jen were able to drive through most of Mammoth Hot Springs area and snap a few cool pictures before the kids woke up.

One of the first things we saw when we entered the park were some mountain goats!  The zoom lens on Jen's DSLR camera came in handy!

Then as we entered the Mammoth Hot Springs Visitor Center area there were tons of Elk just lounging on the grass between buildings.

A shot from the Mammoth Hot Springs lower area....

At this point the kids were both starting to wake up and were CRANKY!  We knew it was getting close to dinnertime...so we headed back to the visitors area.  We figured the kids could see the Elk (assuming they were still there) and we would get some dinner.  The Elk were still there and the kids thought it was super cool.

Jen saw this sign and was going to have the kids pose like wild tigers and take a picture....but before she could ask, the kids did this all on their own.  Yup, they were cranky, tired AND hungry!

Logan perked up immediately with a glass of cold water.  He loved that the cup had a bear on it....so he smiled for this picture.

Zach on the other hand was hard to please - period.  Yes, that was his face when his hot dog arrived.  He asked for a hot dog...but apparently didn't want to eat.

We trekked back to the North Yellowstone entrance and checked into our hotel.  We were staying at a hotel right on the river and had a nice front door view.  The kids thought the place was pretty cool...

We survived another day.