Family Yellowstone trip!

Here we start on our hike to Ribbon lake.  Hiking in the back country of Yellowstone is something we have never done!  We got all packed up for an adventure.

 

Samuel and the sand hill crane. We kinda made him mad...lots of squawking

Hyrum and Samuel are the family fishermen.  Shawn did learn a fair bit about how to fix a tangled up fishing pole. And we did have to get in the pond to retrieve the reel.  They didn't catch anything but loved casating it out there.

Shawn, me, Samuel and Hyrum got into Ribbon lake.  Cold and a little slimy on the bottom.  But refreshing

We hung our packs at night .  All 6 packs up there.  That could have been a Bear picnic

yes, this is a bear claw mark in the tree holding our packs. Don't know how old it is but it's a great reminder that we are in their living room

Samuel and Hyrum at clear lake.  This lake was bubbling with thermal activity in the middle.

Here are the famous Artist mud pots...spewing some mud

We went down to the waterfall a new way for us, the Uncle Tom's Cabin way.  We loved all 348 stairs.

Here are the herd of bison in our campground

We loved all the thermal pots...really liked the clear blue ones

And yes, we found a swimming hole at Indian Creek

This is a herd of Elk in the Hayden valley. What you can't see is this herd is being chased by 5 wolves.  We were witnesses to mother nature at work....for some dinner!

Sierra is the photographer here, can you tell? She takes the best pictures

Yup, buffalo jam

And it really was a blue mud vent

Mammoth was the most dissapointing though. Very little water running there.

On the way home, the TETONS of course!

And after all the natural geysers, we top off the trip with the man made geyser at Soda Springs

We had a great family vaca at Yellowstone!