Day 3 At Yellowstone!

Woke up this morning around the same time as we have been… no big rush to get going – everyone ate some cereal – loaded up the car and got rolling. Today we did the “upper half” of the “lower part” of the figure 8 (if you can follow that). We drove along the Yellowstone River and it takes you over to the Yellowstone Grand Canyon (driving towards Old Faithful but around the top half of the loop). Grand Canyon lived up to its name – breathtaking views – this is the first time I actually saw anything that resembled “Yellowstone”. We drove to an area which had more of the geisers called the dragons lair and black dragons caldron (pretty impressive). Drove on stopped and ate lunch then drove over to a Junior Ranger Station and had the kids certified “Junior Rangers”… pretty cool – they had been working on a “facts and information” worksheet / newsletter for the last couple of days and got to turn it in to the Ranger. The ranger grilled them on the newsletter they filled out but each of them passed with flying colors! She asked each of them what kind of animal they would want to be if given the choice… Madison: a bunny rabbit because it is kind and peaceful, the rangers reply, yeah nice until a hawk swoops down kills and eats you! Next stop we went to a small picnic area and had a campfire and made some pizza sandwiches (pretty good camping food) about midway through the sky fell out – packed up quickly and headed on (rain stopped). After that it was time either head back to camp or go driving and look for black bears / grizzlies! We headed up north (top right portion of the figure 8 loop)… we got to see 2 grizzlies and 1 black bear – pretty awesome (got some great shots of them). One of them was right on the side of the road so I jumped out of the car and was about 15 yards away from it (there was a suburban inbetween me and the grizzly). After the excitement of seeing the bears we headed back towards the campsite – stopped at a general store and got the kids some ice cream.