The night before, we had arrived back at the hotel room in time for the kids to swim in our hotel's pool. This one had a curly slide that would shoot the kids across the pool. Papa took all the kiddos there while I stayed back in the room organizing and uploading pictures.
The next morning, we were all packed up and ready to head further East. Our departure from Yellowstone took us through the middle of the park on the one road we hadn't driven yet. The first stop that looked promising...Virginia Cascades.
Another waterfall!
Malone next to the creek that led over the falls
Further upstream from the creek, the mosquitoes were horrible. We've been enjoying the break from those nasty critters on our trip. The ones here were even worse than back home if that's possible. I'd left the windows down in the van and unfortunately the minivan was filled with them. It took almost an hour before we had them out or squished them.
We saw more waterfalls in the Brink of the Lower Falls area. Also, we saw the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone which was probably my favorite part of the day. Once again, pictures don't show you the true depth of the canyon. Leaning over the edge of the lookout was enough to make me feel queasy and hold extra tight to the kids, especially B-saurus who had no fear.
While at Lower Falls, I had headed back to the car to look for Malone's other sneaker. Kakes and Malone came with me but quickly became bored as I started to pick up trash and clean out the van. Kakes asked if they could walk a little ways down the path. I had no problem with that and thought the path ended a few cars down. After the rest of our family came back to the car I hollered from the girls to come back.
No answer.
I walked a little bit down the path and saw it went much further than I had thought. I hollered again and heard a reply. It wasn't Kakes and Malone. It was some other kids playing by their camper.
At that point, I was starting to get a little concerned. I walked for about 5 minutes and still no sight of the girls. The path was getting narrower and quite steep. I finally passed another person and asked if they had seen 2 girls walking. They had and sternly said that they didn't think this path was suitable for unsupervised children. I didn't waste time arguing that I hadn't given them permission to walk this far and sprinted down the path looking for my girls.
After another agonizing 5-10 minutes, I came across Kakes and Malone. I was so relieved to see them safe yet so angry that they had taken off that far and scared me. K started to cry as I admonished her for walking so far away from me. I had to take a deep breath and give her a hug and explain that I was upset because they had walked out of earshot and when I couldn't find them right away, I'd started to panic. All's well that ends well...no one was hurt and I hope pray that a lesson was learned.
After those heart stopping adventures, we headed towards the East entrance/exit of the park. We decided to stop by Yellowstone Lake for our lunch but quickly decided that eating in the car was a better idea.
Cold, choppy lake
The wind had picked up and the weather was turning stormy. The temp was down in the 50s when we stopped so we picnicked in the minivan instead of on the beach. Then out of the park we headed.
Mountains on East side of park
snow, out of reach but not far up the mountain
Bison deciding he had the right of way
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