Yellowstone Day 3, Saturday July 28th

Big Day!  We drove North this time to do half of the top loop.  But one of the roads was listed as scary and not really RV friendly.  They weren’t kidding, I was sweating bullets and Rick looked nervous too, the roads were so curvy and they are on mountain cliffs with again no guard rails.  Rick tried driving down the center as much as possible but being a Saturday it was a little more crowded.  I never want to take that road again, Canyon to Roosevelt Tower, 19 miles that took an hour, but a year off my life.  Of course the kids are oblivious and fighting or looking out the window for animals.

Drove on to Mammoth Springs much tamer road, but Mammoth was crazy busy, and there were elk sleeping in the main square.  The area is very popular like Old Faithful, and there is a lot of park ranger living quarters there, but we couldn’t find a place to park the beast so we drove on out of the North entrance of the park to Montana.  Along the way saw the big horn sheep on the mountain. 

Stopped at the grocery store and headed back, for our actual destination, Boiling River.

Boiling River is a spot where the hot springs from Mammoth flow down into the freezing river.  It’s one of the few places you can swim, but it is a 3/4 mile walk to the spot.  Blair didn’t want to swim so she didn’t put on her suit.  So I walked in with her and the others got in, it was very hard the rocks were big and slippery, cold and there was a current, but when you got near the spring water - ywoh it’s hot and around 170 degrees!  The spring looks so pretty but there are signs everywhere that state ‘Scalding hot water will burn!’ or something like that, and Grant of course was like oh that waters not hot, but he learned real quick!  Blair decides she wants her suit and I didn’t bring mine either I was picturing more of a wading situation than hot tubing so I walked ALL the way back to the camper with her and back again as fast as we could!

So this spot used to be ‘Party Cove’,  but now there are signs that outlaw alcohol and nudity J But there was this person there that had on a bikini but was a man, I think he was transitioning and I tried not to stare but the guy is wearing a Fred Hardy type bikini – that looks like tattoos and has sparkles all over it and chains, it wasn’t easy not to look.  But Blair noticed and Rick said the other kids did too, because that bikini bottom wasn’t covering up his goods very well.

We’d finally all cooked ourselves or frozen so started the long drive back home when HELLO – there are about 20 cars pulled over and people running (that’s your clue in Yellowstone that they have spotted something good!)  Oh it was a BEAR!  A cute black bear in this little valley walking around, hitting flowers and then it followed a stream into the woods – very cool!  The people next to us had seen grizllies swimming and a ton of bears they said you had to get up early to see them – great.  Then we saw another on down the road a way and this lady was kind of close, so we jumped out and we ended up climbing the ladder on the camper to see it but these dumb guys walked off the road into the grass to find it – it was a lot closer than they realized.  The park ranger pulls up and takes their driver licenses and he was pissed!

Tried making brownies in the oven tonight – YUK – didn’t think you could ruin a box mix but I did, we are at a higher altitude and the box has different directions, whoops, and the oven it terrible, it is gas with only a thin line down the middle so brownies were raw on top and burned on the bottom and a weird texture since I didn’t dr them up for the altitude.