I find it so interesting that you can experience the National parks in so many different ways. We usually do the least expensive routes to save a little money and stretch the dollar. Camping, packing our own food/supplies, and not using the tour guides or available packages are some of the ways we do this.
I hadn't really thought about it that much until I saw a man get out of a tour bus wearing all white, with fancy cowboy boots and hat, and drinking a glass of wine. He walked over to the edge of the rail, took a sip of wine while he looked at the waterfall, and headed into the gift shop.
What a different experience we were able to have! I don't really think he knows what he's missing. We get dirty, eat granola bars, fill our own bottles of water, and go the the bathroom in pit toilets, but we've learned a few tricks to seeing as much of the parks as possible.
Here are a few of the fun experiences we were blessed to have:
Hours and hours of walkie talkie conversations with the other car... including hours and hours of singing Pizza Angel and Rapunzel songs leading to a household ban on said songs.
Finding large logs, dragging them to the Yellowstone River and watching them float down.
Getting the kids up at the 5 am in the freezing cold to go search for wildlife hunting and feeding off of existing carcasses. Sometimes the kids had a hard time waking up... but Cliff always packs a big thermos of hot chocolate!
One morning, we saw a nest with some baby Ospreys in it. Mason Liv and I decided to hike down there to take a closer look.
They were so cute! A professional photographer was down there and had been watching them for days. Apparently the mother was trying to get them to come hunting for themselves, and was refusing to feed them. They would have none of it and just sat there crying for their food.
We watched for a while, but when we headed back to the car, we saw a bison between our cars and us! We had to wait quite a while to head back up there. Bison are very dangerous and gore people who get too close every year.
The kids were pretty nervous!
We ate our girls ice cream,
went on many interesting walks and hikes,
tried to bum free rides,
touched the warm river water,
and played in cold river water!
We enjoyed several different hot spring spots.
We stood on the Continental Divide sign.
We participated in the Junior Ranger Program at both parks.
We listened to Cliff read Yellowstone ghost stories,
searched for animal tracks in the marshy areas,
and explored the waterways and islands with my parent's canoe. This was a particularly fun activity!
Here's the moment that Mason realized he was seeing his first Trumpeter Swan! They pursued him for a while.
And this is where Kaiah and Sofie realized that they could maneuver the canoe all by themselves!
Exploring the islands of Jackson Lake!
We jumped off of boulders,
played the license plate game (We got all 50 states... here's our last one!! Vermont!),
and played Nertz in the cabin we rented for 2 nights.
And the fun wasn't over when we left the parks. We stopped by a funny, historical town named Ritzville that appeared to be deserted... except for the local grocery store.
We have discovered that if you do a little research, and even if you don't, but are open to an adventure, you will have a lot of fun, make tons of memories, and do it for a lot less money!
