Yellowstone Revisited

We headed to Yellowstone the next day. I made a mistake in my last post, in an effort to try and catch up, I mistakenly said that Riddle Lake is in the Tetons. It is not. Riddle Lake is in Yellowstone. I apologize for the inaccuracy. We spent the day doing more sampling. We took the kids to the Firehole to swim at sunset. Hunter and Max wanted to be sure that there were no leeches in the Firehole before they got in. There were no leaches but there was a guy lounging by a hot pot that flows into the river. He was calling for his kids to bring the hot dogs so they could boil them in the hot pot. Not only do I think that's illegal, I think it sounds disgusting too. Who wants boiled processed meat that has the faint aftertaste of sulphur? Ick.

We stayed at the cabins by Old Faithful that night and we had a nice time hanging around Old Faithful Inn and walking the boardwalks.

The next morning we went to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (hence the name of the park) and we started to hike to Lilly Pad Lake and Crystal Lake. My children in particular were tired of hiking and the girls didn't even want to get out of the car. We hiked along the rim for awhile and Brad and Laura took the kids back to the car while Derek, Wood, Susan and I continued on the hike, which was a pretty one. With all the hiking that we've done in the past several days, I can't blame the kids for not wanting to do it anymore. I think we need a change of activity. They certainly earned it.

Wood and Susan continued along collecting the water samples that he needed and we proceeded to Mammoth where we were to stay the night. Somewhere between Mammoth and Gardiner, there is a spot on the Gardner (yes the spellings are different) River called the "Boiling River." Sounds inviting doesn't it?



I love how the sign warns you of the possibility of scalding with a big red "Danger" above it and in the background are dozens of people in the river. There is a river that flows into the Gardner that is literally boiling and it heats the water up to a nice temperature. There are pools that people lounge in, you just have to be careful to avoid the skin-blistering water that flows from the Boiling River. The kids were fearless letting the currents take them downstream. Older boys were watching them with envy. There were a herd of elk about ten yards away from us and I'm sure they thought that we humans were strange. Thank you Hunter, Rachel and Emma for making sure that Caleb didn't get washed downstream. I think that this was the highlight of the trip. We will definitely go back to that spot again.



We stayed in the cute cabins at Mammoth. Although this was the second trip to Yellowstone in two months, we went to enough different places that it didn't feel like we were just doing the same thing over again. A good time was had by all.