Another day of driving. Norris Geysers first.
Then a really long drive to Mammoth Hot Springs for lunch, animal searching, and getting our Junior Ranger badges. If you're ever in a National Park and have kids, you really stop at a ranger station and see if they can do the Junior Ranger program. We did this with the kids at the Tetons earlier in the spring and they had a blast learning about nature. Yellowstone's program was a lot more intense to finish but all five kids {two little, one medium, and two big kids} finished their packets, learned about snakes in the ranger presentation, and pledged to always be a friend to nature.
Oh, and did I mention that Pearl somehow lost her Junior Ranger badge between Mammoth Hot Springs and our drive back to the cabin? Yeah. That did NOT go down well... especially considering there were limited chances to listen to a ranger program to pass off the requirements. Jeff was able to convince the West Yellowstone Visitor Center rangers to let us buy a new badge because we had proof that she'd finished everything the day before. But they still made her do a pledge and recite all of the things she'd learned on our trip.
We drove all over searching for wildlife {another post to come!} and then hit Hanging Valley and Tower Fall. The cliff walls were really neat, with this line of rock sticking out all along the ridge. I'd never seen rock formations like it.
And on the other side of the road, there was this HUGE cliff wall, just a sheer rock wall. You felt like a tiny ant next to it. There was also evidence of a massive rock slide.
Exploring Hanging Valley.
When we were at the park last May, some of the roads were still closed due to snow. This time we were able to take the road over to Canyon for a long overdue dinner... the high road. It was really, really high up! The hillsides were covered in all of these sunflowers. I wish I had made Jeff stop for a picture.
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