Yellowstone Trip

For Mother's Day, I wanted to go to Yellowstone and have some fun as a family. We left Friday afternoon right after school and came home Saturday night. We had such a fun time! The animals were really active and we saw a total of 5 bears (3 grizzlies and 2 black bears)! We saw antelope, deer, hundreds of bison and elk, a coyote, a bald eagle about 20 feet away, geese, and 2 moose (mama and baby moose). I had expected to see lots of baby bison, but we only saw about 3 or 4. We always give the girls a little tally sheet so they can count the animals we see. We pay them a penny for every bison, .05 for elk, .10 for deer, .50 for bear, etc. We told them when they get to $5.00 the game is over. They got to $5.00 before we even got to Gardiner (which is the north entrance of Yellowstone).
This is where we stopped for dinner on the way to Gardiner. It was sooo cold! The girls ate in the back of the truck, but Landon and I ate inside! We packed sandwich supplies and tons of treats for our little trip. That's always one of the fun parts of any LeFevre road trip.

We love staying in Gardiner, Montana. This campground is directly next to the LDS church building in town. The owners know us by name, send us Christmas cards and don't take our credit card information over the phone. They trust us to show up when we ask for a reservation. They give the girls free postcards and give us a returning customer discount every time we come.We stayed in the 1 room cabin this time. Kind of tiny, but it has heat and lights. We had cereal in cups for breakfast in bed.That is a buffalo sleeping outside the door of a local business, visible from our cabin. Once when we were staying Gardiner, there were 2 buffalo hanging around the bathroom doors of the campground.

We stopped to see a grizzly bear Saturday afternoon and this is what the girls had to say:

Here are some animals we saw: a coyote, elk, black bear and grizzly bear.We did a small hike around the Norris geyser basin.

We stopped at a sign and read the Chief Joseph story. Emma is studying about Idaho state history and wanted to see what the sign said.

Lauren had a big headache on the drive home. Someone is always in tears by the time we get home from having adventures.