Yellowstone, and the best thing about camping in October.

The kids ON yellowstone.

In October... yes, half way through October even, the family went camping in Yellowstone National Park.  Though it's only about 2 hours away from us, we'd never been, and had been trying to all summer... but dealing with morning sickness and other family priorities (like a wonderful Family Reunion in July) we didn't get our selves together to go camping until then. But with a 5 day weekend we took 3 days of it to finally get up and GO!  (Granted, it took all day to 'get up' and we left at 4pm instead of my preferred 1pm, but after all the teeth pulling and packing and fanagaling, we were on the road 'go'ing.) 
On the drive up we started to listen to a book that Dan had read and really thought we would all like... It was PERFECT!  Gideon Claire and I were all hanging on every word.  The book is Michael Vey - The prisoner of cell 25 by Richard Paul Evans. It's a science fiction adventure story. The first in a series and now we are all impatiently waiting for the next book!  

All those white wisps are springs, fumeroles or geysers.

Anyhow we drove up to Island Park, ID and camped there the first night as it was getting dark and we needed to set up camp, and I HATE setting up camp in the dark. Apparently, I'm the only one in the known universe that has that aversion. (!!!???!!!) We had hot dogs, complete with ketchup, mustard, relish and sauerkraut,  with a side of pork and beans. By then we were all so tired we skipped s'mores and went straight to bed.  It was COLD in the tent that night, and I later found out it didn't have to be that bad as our tent door was left open a good 18 inches on the bottom and basically nixed any insulating trying to be done by the very expensive, 4 seasons, you-can-take-it-on-a-trek-to-Mt. Everest tent.  But after a night of tossing, turning, searching for more covering to put on everybody, waking up and trying to fall asleep, and even hearing wolves howling (!!!), we ended up getting up early, packing our site up and eating breakfast in the car on the drive into Yellowstone.  I'm glad I packed one day of cold breakfast makings!

There is an amazing amount of waterfalls.
There are literally hundreds in the park.

Another bubbling spring.

 Though the nights were cold, the days were rather pleasant. Still cool but perfect walking around weather.  We drove the northern roads making more stops than I can remember and camped in Slough Creek campground. That night for dinner we had my own dutch oven recipe of saucy chicken.  It was a total hit and I realized that a warm dutch oven dinner on a cold night is a big positive to fall camping.  Then for dessert we gorged out on s'mores.  Ben quickly figured out where the marshmallow bag was and even though we tried to portion them out he was always being found with his hand, or hands, in the bag.  Little sneaker!  After night fell there was a small disturbance in the neighboring camp when a Bison walked right through their camp and into the river on the other side. The kids were enthralled.  It was too dark for pictures though, so you'll have to take my word for it! ;) That was the highlight of the evening, the lowlight was Dan locking our keys in the car right before bed.  No comment as to my thoughts on that.

Ben can be seen with his
hand in the bag.

That night we slept MUCH better.  No problems with cold, but Gideon did wake up with a bad headache... maybe I should have portioned his s'mores out too!  He also got up to pee twice... and of course my 'mother hearing' woke me up both those time as well... then I had a hard time going back to sleep.. thank you pregnancy... but we did end up sleeping in till after 8 in the am...so I got some sleep in there somewhere.
 

In the morning after exhausting all our own tools we called a park ranger who kindly 'broke into' our car for us and then we pulled out our breakfast makings and had a yummy Mountain Man Breakfast cooked in our dutch oven again.  Tasty! And again, a warm belly for a cold morning!  We did a bit of hiking around the camp area, where Ben had lots of opportunity to perfect his pronunciation of, "Buffalo.... POOP!"  Soon after that we cleaned up, packed up and got on the road and went south to Tower Falls. 

Tower falls. One of the most famous of Yellowstone's water falls.

They had closed the road south of there for the winter so instead of doing the whole loop like we planned, we went back the way we came, then down to Old faithful, stopping all along the way. We ate lunch while waiting for the geyser to make all things ready for its appearance. She didn't disappoint, Old Faithful was amazing and we were told it was a lot bigger than in the spring when a couple we met had been there earlier.  I wonder if the seasons have anything to do with that?  Another good reason to go in October?  

Old Faithful was amazing, though it was basically our last stop before heading back home.  When we got home we sat in the driveway finishing the near last chapter of the book we were listening to, then we unloaded, sent everyone to baths and I went to bed at 9:30.  Ahhhhh, nothing like your own bed after camping.  The colors of Yellowstone were beautiful, the trees were turning here and there, the sun shone all three days, though never hot enough that we had to suncreen Isaac (another perk of October camping), and we saw: Bison, Elk, Pronghorn antelope, a fox, Canadian geese, some kind of odd duck, we heard wolves and chipmunks... I never saw one myself, though the kids were quick enough to, I just heard them chirping at me like they were mad I was invading their space. 

But truly, the best things about camping in October... NOT ONE MOSQUITO!!!!!