Lellowstone 2014

For Christmas, Keith and DeAnn gave all the Ivins' a trip to Yellowstone! Boy, were we super excited at our house!!! A month before, we had a chain count down going on. It was the perfect trip for all of us. Getting out and seeing all the animals and the scenery was AWESOME! We did a boat load of driving. We crossed 4 states in 5 days and drove about 2,000 miles. The kids were absolutely amazing in the car. It was fun to trade with the cousins and have new kids ride with us from time to time.

Aspyn was sure she saw an alligator the first day we drove through. Aspyn and Chez were in with Justin and Steph, and they were trying to find as many different animals in Yellowstone to write down. They were passing a river and Aspyn started yelling..."I saw an ALLIGATOR!!!! It was the biggest alligator I ever saw! They said there aren't any alligators in Yellowstone, and she insisted she saw it. So when they passed another river, she yelled again...I saw it again! See I told ya there were Alligators in Yellowstone!!!" Chez kept calling Yellowstone - Lellowstone so that's what's its called at our house. It was a great great trip!!! *sorry, super long post and the pictures are all out of order and I don't care.

One of the nights, Tyler was playing volleyball and the girls were playing nicely and I needed to get out so I got a crew together and we drove about 20 miles to see these waterfalls that were close by. They were pretty cool.

One of the days into Yellowstone - we found this big old critter and stopped to watch her for awhile. We definitely did a lot of "flipping around" so we could stop and look at animals on the side of the road.

So we had stopped around a turn in the road with a pull out and were looking at a hillside that had a dead animal there the day before (halls saw it) Well, we look up and we see this coyote running down the road and we thought it was a wolf. We were all excited until we realized. Well, anyway, it ran right into Justin (see picture below) so of course Justin was just going to mess around with it. Justin isn't going to hurt a freakin fly... so we are all watching and laughing cause it was just Justin being Justin, when we hear this lesbo for real lesbo yelling at Justin to get away and stop tormenting and harassing the coyote and to leave it to its natural habitat and crap and that it was animal abuse and cruelty. So of course, me and Nicole start yelling at this freakin tree hugger lesbo from Washington. Tyler starts yelling at me "Hun!" "Hun!" This woman speeds off and goes and finds a park ranger giving him our truck and Justin SUV to him. The ranger then comes and finds us to talk to us. So we almost got kicked out of Yellowstone for "harassing" a damn coyote! (not really...the ranger was really cool about it..but I am still puffing about this crazy lady still!) Anyway, it was a bit funny and a bit annoying that some woman who has no experience outside of her bubble can create such a problem for people who know about wild animals.

See it's running right to Justin!

Heading up to check out Tower Falls

We were ready to ROCK!

Tower Falls

Doing a little balance

We stopped a lot to "glass" the hillsides. We had lots of people stop and ask us what we were looking at cause we looked all official.

The was up in northern Yellowstone into Montana. One of the rangers said that most of the animals were up there just starting to migrate down for the summer. Michael and Michele had seen a black wolf up there the day before. We saw about 10,000 buffalo though. The scenery was amazing.

Crossed the Continental Divide and had lots of radio discussions about if your pee really would do what its suppose too. Keith said he tried it and it worked...it went rolling down both sides of the hill.

Yellowstone Lake

The fire was still present

Lots of naps in the car.

Aspyn took this picture.  :)

These 3 varmits were comfy cozy in the truck with lots of room. It was nice to take the big old dodge even if gas killed us!

So we went on this little hike cause we heard there was a grizzly bear so we were walking over to see it - and apparently we were in the wrong spot like 50 yards from it (it was dying) we were getting yelled at bad by one of the rangers cause Keaton was walking right into the area. I look over and literally like 20 feet away we are walking passed this buffalo, calf and bull. No one had even seen them! The mom looked like it was about to die, but still it took my breath away when I saw it and realized we had like 20 little kids tramping past it.

Fishing Bridge - Grandpa Hadd fished on this bridge every summer as a kid.

Us walking right past the Bison and not knowing.

Just stopping to glass again and stopping traffic.

The dying Grizzly. It was like 22 years old. It had gotten in a fight.

We loved looking out and seeing all the steam coming up from every nook and cranny. Aspyn thought the geysers were cool.

Some hot pots

So literally we had been in the park like 20 minutes and the lead car gets on the radio to tell us there were a little herd of bull bison up the road. Everyone freaked out like it was the first and last time we were going to be seeing Buffalo. We all bailed out of the cars and were RUNNING to get some good pictures and were so excited. We saw like 6 and were just on cloud 9. Well - little did we all know that like 5 minutes later we would be stopped for 30 minutes becuase buffalo were in the road and then like 10 minutes after that we pulled off to look at something and here comes an entire herd like 10 feet by us. So by the end of the trip - we were like oh yep! there's a buffalo who cares?!?!??! It was funny...little did we know that buffalo aren't a rare sighting in Yellowstone that we were going to see 10,000 and not even blink an eye but those first 6 were like mystical creatures that we all got googly eyed over!

HAHAHA!

We had a Bison migration that walked like 20 feet from us. It was kinda fun to be that close to these HUGE animals!

Looks just like a cow calf!

I got snorted from this mom cause I got a little too close to her baby. I jumped back pretty quickly - but the calf and mom were walking right past me! I wasn't in their trail!

Boy, were the girls excited to see the buffalo!!!! That was what they talked about what they wanted to see the most. Poor McCoy was asleep in the car - but he didn't care too much!

Justin was naturally trying to herd them so he could get some good documentation. Aspyn was over by him and he got a little too close to one and it tried to kick at him. Aspyn said it was funny. lol

These two put on a pretty good fighting show

We looked down river and low and behold two were fording the river - so Davis took off with my camera to get some cool pictures. He was on a mission!

We got stopped in traffic for like 30 minutes becuase we had a stampede in the road and the ranger wouldn't let us get around them for a while.

Midway Geyser Basin

Love all these girls! - We needed big cousin help A LOT!

Tyler just couldn't help it. We didn't get a picture of the Chinese lady literally having a modeling session with herself for like 30 minutes in front of Old Faithful. It was too freaking funny. We laughed out loud and she knew it.

Firehole Lake Geysers...can you see David sticking his hand in the hot pot? Idiot.

Heading to see Old Faithful!

The herds of people just to watch some water erupt out of the Earth.

The kids had front row action.

Chez was a wreck at this point so she got her bink. They started loving each other, so I took a picture or two and the next thing you know - we had 5 Asian people with their camera's in the kids faces cause they thought it was so cute. So weird.

A little cousin love

McCoy was trying to attack Tyler. He wasn't biting him or anything he just going for the juggler with his mouth. It was funny.

There she blows!!!

Aspyn and Tyler went for a hike to some falls. It was raining, so the littles and I opted out. We had a nice photo shoot instead. Well - sorta.

Of course, McCoy was loving that he could drive and working out his mad skills!

Aspyn was NOT pleased to be soaked. She was cold and wet, but she said she had fun hiking the falls. It was the Yellowstone River upper falls that lead into the "Yellowstone Grand Canyon."

They were actually quite a sight. I ran down to the look out to take a picture. Had we known it was there - we probably would have passed up the hike in the rain.

The steam that was every where was really pretty to see rising up pretty much everywhere you look! It's crazy how hot one place can be underground.