An opportunity came up for us to go up to Yellowstone again. My grandma's nephew has a cabin in West Yellowstone. All of my siblings would be able to go, so we couldn't miss that. So for the second summer we made the long 16+ hour drive to Montana. The kids weren't as well behaved in the car this year. I think they knew what they were in for - lots of time in the car. The biggest problem was that they could not agree on movies to watch. Here is a rare moment when one of them was asleep. For the most part they were awake the whole trip! We decided to take 2 weeks again and left on Saturday, July 19th.
We drove 8 hours and stayed in Elko again. This time we stayed at a hotel with an indoor pool and spa which was a welcome relief.
We didn't want to pay for two rooms and since we have 5 people we had to get creative for Grant's sleeping arrangements. We were able to push two chairs together and he fit perfectly.
The next morning we drove 4 hours to Twin Falls, ID and had lunch. We decided to visit Shoshone Falls on our way out of town. They control the amount of water that goes over these falls, so this was a medium amount of water. Apparently when the falls are at full capacity it is quite amazing to see and hear.
This water is part of the Snake River and flows down this beautiful canyon.
For whatever reason, they had to take a picture by this stump. We had to move on though, as we will had 4 more hours of driving.
Everyone arrived at different times on Sunday night for a week of fun. Despite our protests, all of the kids insisted on sleeping in the loft together on air mattresses. The girls were on one side and...
...The boys on the other. Grant slept in our room and Mateo slept with Natalie and Pete.
On Monday morning we had planned to go horse back riding. When we woke up it was sprinkling so we held out hope that it wouldn't get much worse. When we got to the ranch we were able to get rain jackets for everyone.
The rain kept getting worse, so...
...they had us wait in the barn for a while. It looked like the rain wasn't going to stop, so we headed home. We were able to re-schedule to later in the week. On the way home, it started to hail really, really hard. We had to pull over and it seemed like the hail was going to come through the windshield.
We finally made it back to the house and the kids watched Frozen.
We were cooped up in the house for a couple of hours while it continued to rain. Ryan and Mandy had already gone to Yellowstone for the day, so the rest of us decided to try our luck and try to see a few things.
We drove to an area called Artists Paint Pots which is a spot we didn't make it to last summer. There was plenty of rain still along with lots of puddles.
Lots of cool stuff to see.
This one had bubbling white mud which the kids thought was cool, but they weren't so thrilled with the sulfur smell.
Family group shots in front of the awesome view.
It stopped raining for a while on our hike through this area. I love this picture of Danny and Grant.
Especially since this picture was taken about 15 later. There was a lot of really loud thunder that totally freaked out Grant. He couldn't get back to the car soon enough.
On our way back to the house we stopped by Gibbon Falls which is on the Gibbon River. Grant was done sightseeing, so he and Danny stayed in the car.
While we were looking at the waterfall, it started to pour again, so we had to huddle in the little map kiosk. I love this picture. Check out Mackenzie and Taylor underneath. We got back to the house all wet, but at least we were together!
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