Yellowstone 2015 Day 1

We went to Yellowstone this year for the 7th time. It never gets old! We love it every time. The first day we left Blackfoot from Grandma's house and went straight to the park. We began the trip by driving the Riverside Drive in hopes of seeing bald eagles. We didn't see any eagles, but I spotted these cute boys by the river. 

Then we headed down to Old Faithful area. This year Mark and Dax participated in the Young Scientist program. This program is a lot like the Junior Ranger program but you get a fancy backpack to use around Old Faithful. The boys, mostly dad, loved using the digital thermometer to measure the temperature of the geysers and hot pools. I didn't catch a picture--oops. We also had the chance to see Beehive Geyser go off, which we had never seen before. We saw Old Faithful, of course, and then walked the close loop where we caught up with the Webbs. After seeing Castle Geyser begin to shoot everywhere, we met up with the rest of the Daniels clan.

Beehive Geyser was really cool!

I like this picture of Mark by Old Faithful.

We are getting old, but we are still cute.

Castle Geyser in the background.

We saw this Mountain Bluebird near the geysers.

There are lots of Golden Mantle Squirrels running around.

We drove the Firehole drive with everyone and took a picture next to the gorgeous waterfall there. We also saw this beautiful elk. Then we headed toward Canyon.

We tried a new hike this year called Ice Lake, which is near Norris. Everyone came, even Grandma and Grandpa. It was short and easy. Our boys loved having their cousins hiking with them. And of course, there was rock throwing once we reached the lake.

The older cousins

The Ockey Fam 

Throwing rocks is a must near any water.

After Ice Lake we headed over to Canyon. We love the beautiful Canyon and lower falls. We looked for our Osprey friends and they were on their nest just like the last time we visited. They definitely had eggs in there, and we caught both Osprey sitting in the nest. We birders were very excited.

We also drove over to Artist Point and took our traditional family picture. We also saw some bull elk and had a little bit of Utah rain (where it rains while the sun is shining) before heading down to Lake to spend the night.

Osprey...so cool!

These boys are great friends! It was cute to watch them hold hands and walk together.

This is the elk we saw. After watching him for awhile, we finally saw the other two elk sitting behind him. 

I'm going to title this picture: Bison in the rain.

You can look back through time at all our pictures in this spot by visiting this post.