Into the woods and beyond

So yesterday, yes yesterday, because 2am just wasn't a good time to try to recap the longest day I have had in a long time, was amazing! We left Idaho Falls later than we wanted and headed out to the Grand Tetons. We arrived at the visitor center to figure out what to do with limited time and disability friendly. We signed the girls up to get their junior ranger badges and bought Papa a lifetime membership to all National Parks for $10...sweet! The girls participated in a Junior Ranger activity, learning about all the wild animals in the park and checking out their pelts, which was so cool and creepy. Mila answered the first question they asked. "What are the two types of bears we have here" Mila raised her hand high and said " Grizz-a-ly bears and black bears". She was very proud of herself. We headed out with maps in hand into the wild :).  Immediately after entering the park we saw a commotion on the side of the road. It was a mama moose and her baby calf. That was an amazing start to our adventure. We went to Jenny Lake and Jeremy, Mila, Kaiya and I headed out for a short hike while Papa caught up on some reading. We found a cute little chipmunk and a gorgeous spot on the lake for us to splash around. We drove through Grand Tetons and saw gorgeous scenery. It was so lovely! Mila passed out in the back seat just after finishing her junior ranger packet, so Kaiya had to be sworn in for the both of them. So Cute! After that we were Yellowstone bound. We headed into yellowstone and quickly came upon a herd of over 20 Elk basking in the sun in a field. It was a great find. We got out and Kaiya got scared because the Elk were flicking their ears at her. We continued on our drive headed for the Old Faithful Geyser. Papa felt everything was taking too long, but we convinced him that Jeremy could drive late into the night and that spending more time in the park would be worth it. We finally made it to the Geyser with 10 minutes until the estimated eruption time, nice work, right? Otherwise we would have waited about 72 more minutes until the next one. The girls loved watching the water come out of the earth like that, it was so impressive. We thought we should make our way out of the park so we started our drive all the while searching for animals as we were told late afternoon was the best time. We came across another group of people on the side of the road with cameras and looked up on the hill to see and enormous grizzly bear making his way down. We watched and took pictures in awe, but also wanted to get out of there before he came much closer! A little further down the road we saw a Bison grazing 5 feet from the roadway. We got a great view of that enormous fellow! As we drove further I looked down in this lovely valley to see a huge figure walking along. This was an even larger grizzly bear with cubs! AMAZING! More bison and awesome birds and then out of the park and into the night. We had over 300 miles to drive to get to our hotel destination in Gillette, Wyoming. Jeremy was the driver and he was ready for the challenge. There was an amazing lightening storm for several hours which was gorgeous to watch from the car. Then into the mountains where Jeremy had to drive 20 miles per hour due to hundreds of deer on the side of the roadway. Someone wasn't so careful and we saw ambulances headed to them, but even they could not drive fast. It was a stressful drive, but we made it to Gillette at 1:30am. We thought we would take it easy this morning and rest a bit. The girls and I headed to the water park at our hotel and went on a few water slides and we are now gearing up to go to Mt. Rushmore and the Badlands. Everyone is having the best time and the irritation is minimal to date, we continue to feel blessed that we have the opportunity to take this trip and will take the good with the bad! Keep those happy thoughts coming our way. Until later...xoxo