Day 66 - Yellowstone Day 3
After a good night's sleep we made many trips to the car to load/repack all our stuff. We went down and got some breakfast and headed out. Our initial plan was to do some sightseeing, Head to the town of West Yellowstone for an hour or so and then off to Helena. Things are never as simple as they seem.
Our first stop was to do a small hike around Pelican Creek which feeds Yellowstone Lake. This was a nice easy walk and it actually took us to the beach of the lake. Of course, we had to get in. The kids had a lot of fun playing in the sand and on a Sandbar. Apparently this area is where Grizzlies during the months of October-May catch cutthroat fish for their meals. Luckily we didn’t find any bears nor did we see any pelicans (which was odd). We were prepared with the bear spray anyway!
As we left this hike and headed northward we ran into more Bison and Bison watchers. This presented us with a traffic jam and a delay in our schedule. One did decide to cross the road right in front of our car. After that we got a glimpse of a few male Elk with very large racks. Our last animal sighting for the day was a coyote which was really cool. It too crossed the road in front of us and Joshua got a great picture of it.
We took a short drive to view the upper falls of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It is not quite as impressive as the lower falls but it's still a waterfall. There were some hikes here but we chose to skip them this time (not to Caleb’s liking).
One of our last stops was for a late lunch as we overlooked Gibbon Falls which was beautiful. There were several viewing sights and at each one the view got better and better.
The last stop of the day before we left the park was to travel back to a little creek called Nez Pierce Creek. The kids all got their bathing suits on and played in the water. It’s a nice shallow creek where they could easily build damns. Christina has asked to go back next week to finish the damn.
During the last few days we have seen lots of international people. Christina has asked many questions about why she can’t understand them and Sarah has tried several times to explain this to her. Well today as Sarah and I stood in front of our hotel to take a picture a elderly Chinese couple approached us. They wanted their picture taken so we took it. This was a fun way to show and see Sarah have to communicate with someone that she couldn’t understand. Amazingly it worked. Later in the day the same thing happened with another pair of Chinese ladies but one of them spoke a decent amount of English.
As you can see due to animal sightings our “plan” got interrupted so we didn’t get back until a little later than we had expected. Although it is nice to know that God always knows the plan. This trip has shown us more amazing sites and wonders of this world God created. We are very thankful for all we have seen.