Today we went up to the Northwest part of Yellowstone and visited Mammoth Springs. We went to the visitor's center where the kids became Jr. Rangers… it was neat this time, the Ranger asked for everyone's attention and announced it out loud that they are Jr. Rangers. Then we had a quick picnic on the lawn in front of the center. We went on a short hike up to the springs. I felt like I was on the moon… there were lots of big white rocks and little white mountains with water flowing down from some of them. We were not there long because we had to go for our whitewater trip.
We crossed the border into Montana and went to the whitewater rafting company and got registered and changed for our trip. We were going to do 8 miles down the Yellowstone River. We got on the yellow school bus with about 50 other people and drove a few minutes down to the river. Then we were off… of course I had to fall in just getting on the raft… Tim steps on a wet rock and I follow, he is fine and I fall in… how embarrassing! We went on our boat with another family from Canada and they had a 6 year old girl that sat by Leah… they had so much fun playing and screaming. Megan sat in front with Daddy; she even took a swim at one point. It was warm but the wind made it quite chilly mixed with the wet of the rapids. We all got really wet and hit some good rapids. It was a lot of fun and very memorable!
We went back into Yellowstone, stopped at the General Store for ice cream and souvenirs and then it was a long ride back to camp… lots of driving here in Yellowstone but I feel like we got to see a lot of the park. The drive home was made much longer by all of the stops due to bison in the road. Tonight will be about dinner, packing up, and cleaning. It will also include our nightly ritual of taking care of bug bites, blisters, and owies… being in the outdoors is rough. Then it will be tuck in time and the kids will be playing noisily in their beds and we will tell them to be quiet about 10 times. We are slipping into a routine and enjoying our time. We will miss Yellowstone but tomorrow we are onto South Dakota for 5 days. See you there!
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