SIX states vacation: Montana

Since I am in National Park mode, we took a long day trip up to Yellowstone and over to Jackson Hole.  The kids: 

The adults: 

Yellowstone is always bigger than I remember. It really isn't a place you can see everything in a day, especially if you want to drive over to Jackson. Someday I will learn my lesson. It wasn't this day. We did get to see some waterfalls. First, Gibbons Falls: 

Then we went to the Grand Canyon (of Yellowstone), which I kind of like more than the actual Grand Canyon. 

 

Maybe it's because you can see the river. It's so picturesque. That must be why I took a lot of pictures.

 
My parents and 7 of their 12 grand kids.

Most of the kids took off on a little path. I followed and we ended up on a fun little hike.

We ended up here,

with a better view of the falls.

There was a path below that led to an even better lookout of the falls. Noah really wanted to go but we had a few littles that I wasn't sure Logan and I could handle on steep edges so we had to skip it.

Our last stop in Yellowstone was Old Faithful. Last time we just missed it. This time we were prepared to wait. Our timing was very good considering it was us. We ate lunch, picked out some souvenirs (meet Zack's new fox) and...

We are going to have to go back to Yellowstone to spend more time. It is really beautiful.  We didn't see a lot of wildlife and we didn't see the grizzly bear that was hanging out near the road.  We are going to go back until my kids appreciate the beauty enough to stop begging me to let them watch a movie while we were driving. You would think it was child abuse! It's not that I am unreasonable, they can watch a movie once they can name every animal, tree, flower, plant, type of rock, cloud, and habitat in Yellowstone. 

Now for a few random photos. My littlest nephew Crew. So cute and so good! I wasn't in the same "outfit" he rode in but I heard he was amazing. He never asked to watch a movie once.

Ben wanted me to take this picture. I don't think he realized that his gun was pink.

When I was in high school a fun date was to go up to West Yellowstone to see a play at the Playmill. It's a tiny little live theater that sells super good fudge. This year one of the plays they performed was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. I LOVE that play. I think I saw it at least three times when they performed it the summer before my senior year. Great memories!  I wanted my boys to see it so that maybe we could all break out into dance and sing the "go go go Jospeh" song together.  So far that hasn't happened. But it was worth another drive up to Montana to see it.