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.

Our Yellowstone Trip - Swimming in Firehole River

On Monday morning of our trip (i.e., July 23rd), we headed into Yellowstone National Park again.  Our  destination was a swimming spot on the Firehole River that a friend had told us about.  As was the case with the previous day's swimming, this was a big hit with the kids.

In the above picture, you can just barely see (upper left) the cars parked up on the one-way road.  From the road, one took some stairs down to an overlook, then a sort of trail on down to the water.  The area right at the base was fairly shallow; there was a rock shelf that the kids could safely walk out on and then jump into the river without getting into the main current of the river.

I initially declined to don my swim suit, so Mark was in the water with the kids while I was on shore taking pictures.  Eventually, however, I went back up to the car and changed into my trunks and headed back down.  Mark took the following picture of Levi and me after he (Levi) had swam out to me.  Levi's picture is adorable; mine not so much.

All in all, I believe Mark is much more photogenic than am I.

And as for the kids, they're just plain adorable.

After we had been there quite a while, Levi and I discovered another little "cove" in the river and went down to explore.  On the way down (after I had gotten after him several times for trying to climb up the rocks on the other side of the outcropping that led down to our "beach"), Levi told me to be sure and be careful.  "I don't want you to die, 'cause you're my dad," he said.  My heart melted.

Then Aaron joined us in our secret spot while Levi chased a squirrel.

After spending a couple of hours at the river, we headed back into West Yellowstone for some snacks and some browsing through souvenir shops.  I, of course, bought an ornament as a souvenir of our trip, and I also found a couple of small birch bark boxes, handmade in Russia, as stocking stuffers for Esther and Annie.  I had seen these in Russia when we adopted both of them and Aaron, but this was the first time I had seen them in a shop here in the States (very reasonably priced to boot).  

After our snacks and browsing, we headed back to the cabin for lunch/dinner, then relaxed while we watched "Mall Cop" (which I think Mark enjoyed as much as the kids).

Later in the afternoon, we headed back into West Yellowstone to see "Annie Get Your Gun," which was being performed at the Playmill Theatre.  Prior to going into the theatre, however, we visited a candy shop that had been recommended by a friend.  We gave each of the kids $3 and sent them in with Nathan (who was a good sport) while we waited outside.

The kids all seemed to enjoy "Annie," which, I believe, is the first time they (at least the Quads) have seen a live musical production.  I wish I could have filmed all the looks on Levi's face (who was sitting next to me) as he watched the show.  I strongly suspect he will like musicals.  ;-)

Thus ended our last day in Yellowstone.  The next morning, we would drive through the Park, then on to Jackson, Wyoming, where we would spend the last night of our trip.

Our Yellowstone Trip - Swimming in Island Park

Following on yesterday's post, after going back to the cabin to change, we headed down to Island Park, Idaho - just a few miles away - to take the kids swimming in the North Fork of the Snake River.  The water was much to cold to actually swim in, but the kids had a lot of fun just wading in the shallow river and playing on and off the dock, pictured below.

The following short video clips just missed Levi running the length of the dock and jumping in the river at its end.  You can get a sense of his exuberance in the above photograph.  Before we knew it, he had charged down the dock and off the end.  The video picks up with him coming out of the water.  He, as well as all the kids, were just enjoying the heck out of themselves.

Things then took an even more interesting turn when Levi spotted a small fish near the dock.  Then, the hunt was on.

Mark upped the ante when he told the kids that he'd give $20 to whoever caught a fish first.  That's when things got really serious.  Nathan joined in and spent the next hour or so, wading up and down the river, trying to catch a fish with his hands.

Meanwhile, the Quads moved upriver, taking their search further afield.

When we first arrived, we were the only ones on our side of the river.  But we were eventually joined by a couple of families who appeared to be related.  One of the kids had a BYU T-shirt on.  At first, only the wives and the kids would come down to the river.  The three husbands kept their distance, standing in a group up in the parking lot, talking and looking on.  

I suspected that they were trying to figure out what the deal was:  why were two mature men with these five young kids?  I had noticed similar looks that morning in Yellowstone, at Old Faithful and at the Wolf and Bear Center, and I would experience it again throughout the remainder of our trip.  People would look at Mark and me, and then at the kids, then back at Mark and me, a quizzical look on their face.  I could just see the wheels turning in their minds and the conversations they were having with themselves:  "Could those guys be gay?  They don't look like brothers.  I mean, I've heard of gay couples adopting kids, but I've never heard of a gay couple with *five* kids!  What the ... ?"  I just smiled.

Finally, after searching for at least an hour, Nathan rose up from the water and yelled, "I caught one!"  By then, at least one of the husbands from the parking lot had apparently decided it was safe to come down to the dock, and both he and his kids were well aware of the hunt that was going on.  Everyone turned to look at Nathan.  These pictures say it all:

It was a fun, fun afternoon.  Such a simple activity that didn't cost anything but from which such memories were made!  

Finally, the time had come to head back to the cabin and heat up that Costco lasagna that we had brought.  We had a nice dinner on the deck of the cabin, then retired to the living room to watch Green Lantern together.  It had been a good day.

Our Yellowstone Trip - Geysers and Grizzlies

On Sunday of last week, we got a fairly early start after breakfast in the cabin and headed into Yellowstone Park for the first time.  Mark, who has been to the park a number of times, and I, who has heard about the crush of people who go to the park every summer, were both expecting long lines of traffic, but we were pleasantly surprised in this regard.  The line-up to get into the park was only a few cars long, and we encountered no serious traffic in the park that day.

Our main destination that day was Old Faithful.  Of course, I've heard about this geyser for as long as I can remember, and it surely must be one of the most photographed sites in the world.  We arrived in time to get a good seat right in front of the geyser and had about a 15-minute wait before she blew.  The kids were much more interested in an old buffalo who had wondered into the scene, however.

After catching this show, we went back to the car, past another bison wondering through the parking area, and discovered a pack of crows happily devouring a pizza that someone had apparently unthinkingly left in the bed of their pick-up.  

From there, we retraced our steps through the park, back to West Yellowstone where we stopped at Arby's for some lunch (since the Quads now refuse to go to McDonalds, unless it's for breakfast - a story for another time).  After lunch, we went to a wolf and grizzly bear wildlife center there in West Yellowstone.  It wasn't quite what I expected - more like a large zoo than an actual habitat - but it was still interesting.  Mark was taken with the grizzlies, and the kids were taken with the machine that turns pennies into oval pressed medallions.

We did see some wolves, but they were all snoozing at the base of trees.  Speaking of wolves, however, as we were walking around, Levi noticed some large buttons for sale that had pictures of the various wolves and bears in the habitat and he especially noticed that one of the wolves was named Joseph.  He excited pointed this out to me, and of course I had to buy it (for $2).  But then I thought it would be fun for Mark to have one as well, so we picked out one of the bears who was named "Kobuk."*  These two buttons now grace the door of our refrigerator, a constant reminder of our trip to Yellowstone (and Mark has a new nickname as well).

*(Kobuk and her sister Nakina were actually from a litter of triplets. Their mother and brother were shot and killed by a resident near the community of Delta Junction, Alaska, and they came to live at the West Yellowstone Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in 1998. They were named by a West Yellowstone and Delta Junction elementary student who picked these names after the rivers near the bear's birthplace.)

Levi outside the Wolf and Grizzly Center

Our Yellowstone Trip: Rodeo

We got away from the house at about 9:30 on Saturday morning.  We pulled off in Bountiful because Nathan needed to retrieve something from the house, and as we were driving up Orchard Drive about five minutes from the house, Mark turned to me and said, "Did you bring the keys to the cabin?"  If anybody ever had deer-in-the-headlights look, it was me.  It had completely slipped my mind - as it obviously had Mark's - to retrieve the keys to the cabin we were going to be using outside of West Yellowstone.

We were glad, however, that we had remembered the keys only 30 minutes from the house instead of three hours away.  So, we retraced out steps and drove all the way back to our house in Salt Lake to retrieve the keys, then we were really on our way.

Things went fairly well after that.  We stopped at a rest stop outside Idaho Falls for lunch, then drove on to the cabin on Henry's Lake, outside West Yellowstone.  It belongs to a colleague of Mark's who had graciously offered it to us for the three days we'd be up there.  I didn't know what to expect.  I had been told it was pretty "rustic."  But I was very pleasantly surprised.

It wasn't large, by any means, but it was very comfortable, with running water and a nice kitchen.

Plus, the views were gorgeous, with Henry's Lake to the south and the mountains beyond, with another big mountain behind us, to the north.

We arrived in time to settle in and make a spaghetti dinner before heading toward West Yellowstone to go to a rodeo.  This was a first for me as well as the kids.  It wasn't quite as large as I had expected, but it was still fun.

A line of riders in the distance as the sun was setting

Mark, who had a horse when he was a young feller, took the kids up close to see some of the horses.

Nathan posed in a cowboy hat borrowed from the cabin

We posed for a group picture before the rodeo started

The highlight of the evening for the kids was when they called out all the kids ages 4-8, then from 9-12.  Levi went out with the first group, whereupon the clown explained to the kids what they needed to do once a calf was released (grab the flag off the calf's tail).  These videos show what happened - first with the younger group, then the older group.  In the first group, Levi can be seen with the red shirt and beige shorts.  Esther and Aaron both participated in the second group, but I can't quite spot them.  Esther nearly grabbed the flag.

It was a fun evening.