Our Yellowstone Trip - Heading Home

Last Tuesday, we tidied and cleaned up the cabin, then headed for our last visit to Yellowstone Park.  This day, we would take a different route and see more of the east side of the park.  Along the way, we saw lots of bison lounging beside the road as well as further afield.  

The highlight of the drive for me was seeing Yellowstone Lake, which was absolutely gorgeous.  We drove alongside it for a good 15-20 miles or so, and just when I thought it couldn't be more beautiful, we came around a curve and saw another vista which was stunning.

That afternoon, we drove by another stunningly beautiful lake:  Jackson Lake at the foot of the Tetons.  The whole panorama was simply breathtaking.

It was also around this point that the kids were really getting to each other (and to us).  We had planned to stay at a motel in Jackson, Wyoming that evening that had a pool, and we were looking forward to letting them exude some of their pent-up energy.  But as we drove south, the skies looked increasingly ominous, and - sure enough - just as we approached Jackson, the skies opened up.  

We tried to be positive, however.  We arrived at the motel and the rain was slacking up, so Mark took the kids down to the pool while I took Nathan back into town to get him (and me) a T-shirt.  When we got back to the motel, Mark was herding the kids up to change.  We had debated going out to eat somewhere, but neither Mark nor I were particularly keen on going back out into the traffic, setting the kids down at a table, etc.  So we ordered pizza, which we ate at a table down by the pool.

By the time we finished dinner, the skies were clearing and the sun came out.  So the kids went back up and got their swim suits back on and proceeded to have a ball for the next hour or so.

After a while, another little girl came down to the pool with her mother.  Annie immediately hit it off with her, and they started playing together.  Before long, we noticed that the mother was calling her daughter "Annie," and we told her that our little girl was also named "Annie."  What a coincidence!

Annie and Annie

Later, the father of the "other Annie" joined his wife poolside.  It was Mark who noticed that the man was speaking to their little girl in Russian, and he walked over and asked the man if that was indeed what he was doing.   The man explained that their Annie had been adopted from Russia (!).  

At this point, Mark called me over, and to make a long story short, it turns out that they (from Boston) had adopted their Annie from St. Petersburg the year after we adopted our Annie from Vladivostok, though both Annies were approximately the same age.  We all marveled at what a remarkable coincidence it was to run into each other at a motel in Jackson, Wyoming, both having adopted from Russia, both having named our daughters Annie - and they were the same age.  Remarkable.

We eventually called the kids out of the pool and had them go upstairs and get changed into the PJs, and this is when we had our little birthday party for Mark.  I had ordered a carrot cake from a bakery in Jackson, which we had picked up on our way in, and we all had carrot cake and ice cream after Mark opened his presents.  He said that he had never liked celebrating his birthday after moving to Utah, because it and Pioneer Day (big Mormon-related holiday) were the same day.  He quipped that perhaps he should plan to spend his birthday out of the state from now on.

A picture Mark took that night when both of the girls were asleep.  They are each holding the stuffed
animal that they picked out as a souvenir of the trip.

The next morning, we packed up and headed for home, dropping the kids off in Bountiful as we came in.  It had been a fun trip - a few stressful moments, yes, but overall a lot of fun.