Riding Reunion Day 4

My mom really wanted to go to Jackson Hole so we did.  The boys, I'll always blame them, wanted to drive back up through Yellowstone in hopes of seeing more animals.  That ended up not being the best plan.  It took us 6 hours to get to Jackson Hole when it should have taken 2-3.  We got stuck in traffic just getting into the park.  Richard had to use the restroom and jumped out of the car and ran into the woods.  Of course we started driving at that point and he had to run to catch up with us.  We all had a good laugh!

 Steph is watching him run back as well...

 I wore seabands while we were driving and it helped so much with motion sickness.

 For this trip we had Kimber, Sam, and Jordan in our car.  It seemed to rotate often.

 I spy my mom...

 We did see one animal...

 We were able to take this awesome picture, so the whole through-Yellowstone-car-drive wasn't a complete bust!

 We were also able to see the Tetons and they were amazing.  Again, a huge benefit to going the long way.

 The sunset was amazing on the way back to Island Park.  We drove the short way that time :)

 We also saw a she-moose right before we turned off the main highway to head to our rental house.

Sam's 14th Birthday (Riding Reunion Day 3)

Sam often gets to celebrate her birthday while on vacation.  This year was no different.  We were in Island Park Idaho, on our Yellowstone trip.

 For her birthday Sam wanted to redecorate her room so she asked for money/gift cards.  Here she is opening a $100 bill from us :)

 "Feel Me" "$5"  haha :)

 The party guests :)

 She chose cookies and ice cream as her treat.  14 candles in a cookie makes for quite the flame :)

She chose not to have a friend party this year.

We are so grateful for Samantha the joy she brings to our family!  She is definitely a bright spot for all of us!

We also celebrated with Konrad's parents once we were home:

Riding Reunion Day 2 - Yellowstone (part 2)

 So many wood railings, I'm surprised we only ended up with one sliver...

 It rained for a bit right as we pulled into this canyon/waterfall viewing area.  It was soooo cold!

 As we drove into Mammoth we spied quite a few elk just hanging around town.

 I believe this is the spot we realized to see whatever we had stopped to see was a mile down the boardwalk.  We were exhausted.  It was the end of the day.  We had to give up.  The men would have kept going...at least I know Konrad wanted to...but the rest of us were done.  Although I'm sure whatever we missed out on was the best thing we would have seen all day!

In total I believe we were in Yellowstone for about 12 hours.  Lots of driving, lots of walking, and lots of cool information given to us by our tour guide app.  It was a fun day that ended at a little restaurant in West Yellowstone where the kids could get pizza and the adults could get anything else they wanted.  We still had an hour drive home after that, and I don't think we made it home until 10:00 or so, it was a long day.  So long in fact that Konrad had to fill up for gas twice b/c the first time he did it, he forgot to actually fill up the gas tank while we were sitting there :), so we pulled out of the gas station and went right to actually buy gas there!