The Great Wilks Family Adventure–Day 5
On day 5 we got to drive into Yellowstone National Park itself, free, thanks to our 4th grader and every kid in a park pass.
Why are you taking a picture of an elk? You might ask. Don’t you have elk at home? Well, yes we do. But this bull was just so handsome and he stood there begging to be photographed. We seem to never have our cameras handy when our elk stomp on by.
Yep, I was there too.
On to the bubbling mud pits that smelled of rotten eggs!
There were also some lovely and deadly hot pools.
Sweet Boy#1 beside the burbling white mud of death.
A deep hot pool that makes little boys wish they had scuba gear and mothers incredibly thankful that they do not!
Sweet Boy#3 and the lovely steaming blue pool.
Sweet Boy#2 and a deeper and possibly even hotter pool that they couldn’t see the walls of and therefore was the subject of much debate about how far back the cavern went and whether or not underwater gear could be found that also protected young explorers from boiling temperatures.
Sweet Boy#3 kindly pointing out the “Do not throw dogs into the boiling spring” sign…just in case any dog owners needed assistance in figuring it out.
Sweet Boy#1 beside the great geyser or was it grand geyser?
But the great/grand geyser was not set to erupt for several hours and so we moved on.
A blazing hot stream with weird stuff growing in it flowed under this bridge. Fascinating!
This was called The Hot Cascades.
It doesn’t look hot…but we could see the steam wafting up and feel the heat in the wind. Amazing.
On the way to the Grand Prismatic.
A closer look…despite Momma’s poor nerves.
Amazing colors.
Some dead dragon flies.
A brisk and beautiful wind.
And counting all of the hats that had fallen off heads and into the lovely pools. I think the boys saw 36.
Finally, we reached Old Faithful.
After a 55 minute wait the famous geyser did not disappoint.
One last stop before we dragged everyone to the yurt for bed.
The Sapphire Pool, Sweet Boy#3’s favorite.
Amazing!
Plus an unexpected geyser eruption. The pearl geyser I think.
A quick glimpse of shell spring.
And a sunset on the drive home.
A lovely evening although sadly it was once again too late to find an open restaurant and I think we ate instant oatmeal before bed…was that it? Fear not, we did feed Grandma Judy something that wasn’t instant before our great adventure ended. Come back tomorrow to find out if day 6 was the day we made it to a restaurant or not.
