USRT15 #10--Yellowstone With the Family

We took our kids into Yellowstone for a day of family adventures. Four years ago war were there during the Player family reunion, but I was excited to take our grown-up kids into the Park again. Dan was still feeling really sick, and I was so amazed by his stamina and good nature that it can't go unmentioned in this post. We reminded ourselves at the visitor center that we were standing on a live volcano older than our minds can grasp. Four years ago they played with this same spinning water globe--A and E could barely get their hands above the pedestal. I tried to capture it their same curiosity.

After checking in at the visitor center, we hiked the kids down a steep trail to see the waterfall in the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.

You'll notice lots of these horizontal/vertical pairs of photographs. On this trip I was constantly trying to figure out which format was better to capture the scale of these spots.

We navigated our way to the eastern side of the Park's loop to see the wildlife in the Hayden valley. We arrived at 4:30 a.m. with all of the wildlife lovers to see the wolves, but we saw lots of buffalo. I think we stopped counting at 200. All of my photos looked a little like this.

On the east side we let ourselves be paralyzed by all of the thermal features. It wasn't too hard to imagine a bad-breathed, giant dragon hiding in this hole with the bubbling water and subtle roar there to remind us of the activity just beneath the earth's surface.

Finally we made it to back to the west side, where we met up with our family to watch the eruption of the Park's most famous geyser.

(Insert large group photo here.)

The photos don't capture the traffic of this park. It's not my favorite thing about it, I'll admit, but I am grateful that so many people have access to such an awe-inspiring spot. Each time I visit them I think again that National Parks are worth their price.