Yellowstone Road Trip–Part One

Every year we like to do a big road trip with our kids, and this year we decided we wanted to take them to Yellowstone.  We used to go all the time when we lived in Utah, but we haven’t been back as a family since we moved to Texas 6 years ago, so our younger three kids had never been.

Here’s what our eleven day trip looked like:  one night in Amarillo, TX, one night in Denver, CO, and one night in Jackson, WY.  Then we spent a day in Grand Teton National Park before driving into Yellowstone, where we met my parents and also my grandparents.  We stayed in Yellowstone for four days before heading onto the next part of our road trip – a night in Cody, WY, then a night in Rapid City, SD (we saw Mount Rushmore and the Badlands), and then one last night in Omaha, NE before we headed back to Texas. 

It was an awesome trip.  This post will just cover the part before Yellowstone.

Amarillo, TX

We started out on a Friday morning, after a minor panic and then repair job for a broken air-conditioner (the night before we left the kids were complaining that it was hot when they went to bed – we went upstairs to check it out and it was 91 degrees up there.  It seemed like horrible timing, but really we were blessed that it happened before we left and not while we were gone.  Also, we were able to find a repair man to come check it out at 10:00 at night, and he was able to fix it quickly the next morning before we left). 

Friday night we made it to Amarillo, Texas.  We ate dinner at this fun place called “The Big Texan.”  I have never seen a place so full of Texas pride.  There was cowboy stuff everywhere.  They also were offering free 72 oz. steaks to anyone who could finish one, but none of us were really up to that challenge.   

All of the kids’ meals came in a little cowboy hat that they got to keep.

After dinner we walked around and played some fun cowboy games:

We made it to our hotel pretty late, but one of the kids’ favorite things on road trips is going swimming at all the hotels, so Daniel took the older five down to the pool while I got Cindy to bed. 

Denver, CO

The next morning we headed for Colorado.  This was at the end of June, when all the fires were burning around Denver, and we could see smoke and fire on the mountains, especially near Colorado Springs.

Luckily the air was still clear enough in Denver for Daniel to take the older kids to a Colorado Rockies game.  One more baseball field checked off the list!

Here the kids are posing with their mountain man father – he grew that beard just for Yellowstone. 

Tristan at Coors Field:

Oliver at Coors Field:

Rachel at Coors Field (I’m not sure if she appreciated the game as much as the boys did, but she did love being bumped up to “big kid” status on this trip):

Dinner at a Mexican restaurant after the game:

Meanwhile, back at the hotel, the younger kids and I were having a swimming party:

Elizabeth and Henry’s favorite thing was for me to take pictures of them falling backward into the pool, over and over:                                                        

Cute little swimmers, all cozy in their towels:

Cynthia quickly fell into a pattern during all the late nights on our trip – a little while after what should have been her bedtime she would start acting super silly and crazy, but still cheerful.  She would do that for about an hour, and then she’d fall apart and start crying until I put her in bed. 

It was funny how predictable she was – we started watching for the silly phase each night. 

Here she is that first night, running wildly down the halls of our hotel.  She kept crashing on purpose, and she thought she was super funny:                            

After baths and jammies, we enjoyed a dinner of Honey Bunches of Oats topped with fresh strawberries (we had stopped at a grocery store to get a few things before we checked into our hotel, and that’s what the younger kids picked for their dinner).  Is that a gang sign Lizza is doing?  She loves doing awesome picture poses like that.

Jackson Hole, WY

Our six happy travelers, on our way to Wyoming the next morning:

Everyone was in awe of the beautiful mountains and trees as we drove through Wyoming.  We don’t have scenery quite like this in Texas.

We ended up driving through part of Grand Teton National Park on our way to our hotel in Jackson.

I love the Tetons.

When we entered the park a ranger told us about an area where a moose had been spotted, so we drove down a little dirt road and got out to hike around and look for animals.  Everyone was excited about our first hike, even though it was a short one, and we didn’t end up finding the moose.

After our hike we drove down to Jackson, got checked into our hotel, and then went back out for dinner at Bubba’s.  We used to go there all the time when Tristan and Oliver were little, so it was fun to take the rest of the kids there.                              

After dinner we went swimming back at the hotel.  This pool was probably the most anticipated one of the trip – we had seen online that it was an indoor/outdoor pool, which sounded really exciting to everybody.  I had told them about the Holiday Inn in St. George that my family used to stay at when I was young, and how it had an indoor/outdoor pool with little flaps that you would swim under to go from side to side.  All the kids were a little disappointed to find that here the door between the pools was wide open, and there were no secret flaps to swim under, but they quickly recovered and still had a ton of fun.  

I took so many pictures trying to get everyone to look at me at once.  I don’t think it ever happened. 

Thank you, Rachel, for still looking at the camera.  Lizza, I don’t think waving at me from under the water counts.

My little swimmer boy:              

Relaxing in the outdoor hot tub:

This was by far Cynthia’s favorite hotel of the trip because they had big fake bear statues all over the place.  She loved trying to find them everywhere. 

Besides her crazy time routine, Cynthia also fell into a pattern of doing what she calls “set ups” at each of our hotels.  Probably because she is a Mott, and that’s what my kids do when they are surrounded by chaos.  Here she is making a nice line out of everybody’s shoes:

Grand Teton National Park

The next morning Daniel, Tristan, and Oliver woke up at 5:00 to go spotting (look for animals).  One of the best times to spot is in the early morning, and they didn’t want to miss anything.

Daniel had tried to prep the boys for the fact that lots of times you get up early to spot and still don’t have any luck– he didn’t want them to be too disappointed if they didn’t see anything.  They ended up having an amazing morning, though.

Starting with this sunrise:

And two bald eagles:

And then the first grizzly bear of the trip!! Daniel was pretty excited about this one, because while we’ve seen lots of grizzlies in Yellowstone before, this was the first grizzly he had seen in the Tetons.

Plus, she had three little cubs with her, which made it even more amazing:

Then, as if that wouldn’t have been enough, they also saw two bull moose:

And some mule deer bucks:

They could not believe what good luck they had. 

Meanwhile, back at the hotel we were doing our own hunt for bears:

And we were enjoying the delicious breakfast. Now that we were at our third hotel of the trip, Rachel and Elizabeth were pretty much breakfast pros – they knew what they wanted and how to help themselves.  They loved all the fresh fruit.

Cindy, on the other hand, just liked to set up all her potatoes in little lines:

Daniel and the boys got back from the hotel (with big grins on their faces) just in time to grab some breakfast before the kitchen closed, and then we packed up the car and headed back out for a day in the Tetons.

The first thing we did was drive back to the area where they had seen the two moose, and we were lucky enough to find them again.  We were the first ones to spot them this time, but pretty soon a big crowd had gathered:

Moose-watching:

Then we drove over to Jenny Lake to do the hike to Hidden Falls.  Daniel and I did this hike when Oliver was a baby, and we wanted to do it again with all the kids. The first time we hiked it we took a boat across the lake to get to the falls, and then hiked the 3 miles back from the falls.  This time we decided to hike the three miles first, see the falls, and then take the boat on the way back. 

We quickly realized that just the two of us hiking 3 miles with a young Tristan and baby Ollie on our backs was a lot easier and quicker than hiking 3 miles with all six kids.  I started wondering if maybe we should have taken the boat both there and back from the falls.

We hadn’t brought a backpack on the trip, so we started the hike just carrying Cynthia, but after about the first 3 minutes we realized that was not going to work (she was way too squirmy, and just wanted to walk, which would have taken all day), so I quickly ran back to the car and got her old Baby Bjorn pack – she really is too big for it, but I was so glad we brought it – as soon as I put her in it, she fell right asleep.  It made the hike much easier.

The older kids running on ahead:

Taking a break by the side of the lake.  You can tell from Lizza’s face that by this time we were all getting hot and tired.  It was a long hike.

Little Henry was such a trooper.  I don’t think any of our 3-year olds have hiked 3 miles before.  A lot of it was uphill and really rocky.  Plus it was his naptime.  He fell probably 25 times (not an exaggeration), but he was such a good sport and never cried.

When we finally made it to the waterfall, he lay down right in the dirt to rest:

Hidden Falls:                          

Everybody was happy about taking the boat ride back across the lake:

After our hike we left the Tetons and drove into Yellowstone.  All of the kids fell asleep and took a nice long nap.  Oliver was the first to wake up, so he got to get out at a few spots to see some waterfalls with Daniel.

Moose Falls:

Lewis Falls:                             

That evening we met up with my parents and little brother, and also my grandparents.  They had gotten to Yellowstone earlier in the afternoon.  It was so good to see them.

We all drove through the park to get to our hotel in West Yellowstone, MT (a little city just outside the west entrance of the park).

On our way we had one of our favorite wildlife encounters of the trip – two beavers swimming along in the Yellowstone River.  We all got out to watch them swim, and we ended up following them for quite awhile down the river. 

We got to our hotel late that night, ate dinner, and then got everyone to bed. 

End of part one.