Island Park/Yellowstone

This summer was our first family trip to Island Park/Yellowstone. Camping in Island Park has always been on our places to visit list for years. Jason has gone camping in Island Park with his dad and family a few times during his childhood and even a few times backpacked into Yellowstone for a few days. The last time he backpacked in was when Korbin was only a few months old. His backpacking trips ended after that. In a few years I think we will try and backpack and camp with the kids. I have an idea of where I would fall in love doing this. So if Jason really wants me to like backpacking he'll take me to Oregon. Every year around this time I think of Oregon a lot (we planned to visit Oregon is August and visited in Oct a few years ago).

Our Island Park trip was a last minute trip. Jason asked me if I wanted to go up for the weekend on a Thursday. He found he had an extra day off that upcoming weekend and that gave us an extra day to stay.  I eagerly said yes. We packed up and left on Saturday morning. It was a very simple trip. I'm learning camping to a lot means good big meals. To us camping means the easier the better and this trip was no exception. Smores, cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunches, hot dogs and chips for one dinner and hobo dinners for the other.
The kids were excited to go up. Teasing has been a big thing between these two lately.

We arrived in Island Park a little after lunch and found a great camp spot near a river and set up camp. We forgot our stool so Jason had to be used in it's place.

After setting up camp we found a few things we wanted to do. We went to a set of nearby falls.

 Kids still going at it.

 Moms always smile in pictures.

 Funny faces.

 Funny faces.

 Jason playing around with the kids.

After the falls we took a small road and wondered for a bit. A few pictures taken by Jason.

Dinner was easy. Hot dogs and smores.

More horsing around.

Sunday we went into Yellowstone. What a beautiful place. We saw a lot of wildlife. Not long after entering the park there were people pulling over to take pictures as soon as they saw something. We joined them.

Including our own wildlife.

We started to make our way to see Old Faithful and saw many fun geysers along the way. Madison was eager to want to touch the water. It was so clear and beautiful I was tempted too. Until I figured out how hot the water really was.

We made it to Old Faithful and had to wait about 15 minutes give or take 10 for the next eruption.
While we were waiting another geyser erupted in the distance. I can't remember the name of it except it only erupts once a day and the time is always unknown. We got lucky and saw it from really far way but it was big enough it didn't disappoint.

Old Faithful. So awesome with that clear blue sky.

The eruption was pretty cool. Afterwards Jason treated us to ice cream. We bought the biggest cones possible to cool off and Jason and I ate them fast. Huge brain freezes followed. We walked around and found a lot of small geysers.
We split ways for a bit. Madison and I were able to see another Old Faithful eruption that was much cooler. Jason and Korbin saw a lot of geysers.

We decided to drive north and check out some more fun stuff while we still had daylight. All we found was a lot of stairs not so much of the cool stuff we expected.

It quickly got dark after we visited Minerva Springs. We drove back to the west entrance.

After we entered the park I told Jason I wanted to make sure to get pictures by the Yellowstone sign. I didn't expect at the time to have to take pictures in the dark.

And our last picture taken on this trip...

By the time we got back to camp and had dinner it was about 11. Dinner was done about at 11:30. The food tasted so good to us especially after munching on small snacks and a few sandwiches all day long.

Monday morning we packed up and drove home. In the distance we could see the Tetons Mountains. Tetons are now on our list.