Vacation, Day 6

After spending an hour at a DI in Salt Lake and stocking up, we drove down to Provo to check out some of the free museums at BYU.  

 The dinosaur bones were cool.

 The kids wanted to stage the picture like the T-rex was coming after them.

 We also looked at the Art Museum and I, at least, enjoyed it.  My kids are not as appreciative of paintings, pottery, and the church history panorama 22 paintings long.

We drove through BYU, and even went by the MTC.  Ryan had to show us where he spent the longest 14 weeks of his life.

Then we had yet another sandwich picnic across the street from the MTC.  I'm pretty sure no one is going to want another peanut butter sandwich for a very long time once this trip is over.

 You can see the Provo temple behind us.  We parked ourselves on a grassy area posted with a sign that said it was for missionaries only.  There were no missionaries to be seen, so we ignored the sign.  It was pretty hot, and we weren't going to stay long.

 We drove back to Salt Lake City, and went to the Clark Planetarium (another freebie).

 After dinner, the youngest three wanted to play in the splash park found right there at the Gateway Mall.

 They got totally soaked.

Then we were ready to call it a day.

Annie started complaining about her ear again.  After a week of antibiotics, she had stopped saying her ear hurt finally. We tried to figure out what triggered the relapse and realized it was probably the pool the evening before.  So we were back to feverish and cuddly Annie.

The Vacation Continues

We started out our morning with a nice continental breakfast at our hotel. There were do-it-yourself waffles, eggs and sausage, yogurt, fruit, cereal, and juice.  Ryan offered to do waffles, and mine was the one that stuck and fell apart, as usual.  I've always been lucky like that.  Then we were off sight-seeing.  We did the tour of Temple Square, starting with a restroom trip at the south visitor's center.  Then we went to the Tabernacle.

 The Assembly Hall

 The north visitor's center

 They changed out the paintings sometime since our last visit.

 And we got a picture of the girls in front of the Christus.

Walked over and got a tour of the Conference Center.  The main lights were not on, so our picture looks a little odd.  They were replacing the carpet in there.

 On top, we had to check out the water feature.

 Then we walked back over to see the temple.

 A kind stranger offered to take our family's picture.

I love the flowers up by the Church Office Building.  I think I want a patch like this somewhere at home.

 I wanted to get a shot of just Ryan and me in front of the temple- in the wedding picture spot.  You can tell how fond Ryan is of public displays of affection.  (To me his body language says he's not comfortable about this...)

 After watching Meet the Mormons at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building, we walked over for a tour of the Beehive House.  It was a much shorter tour than I was used to, I guess due to the extra summer visitors.  It is still a beautiful house.

We had to see Deseret Bookstore, and the kids each got a CTR ring.  We also let the kids pick out something else- Emma wanted a new shirt from H&M, and the rest wanted necklaces from Claires.  I had a moment wishing we had better shopping like this close to us.

 If that wasn't enough activity for one day, we let the kids swim in the pool, while Ryan talked to his mom and I did laundry.

This proved to be not the greatest idea for Annie.  Her ear infection was clearing up with antibiotics and ear drops, and getting pool water in her ear caused a little backslide in her progress.

Travel on a Sunday

We left our campsite, all packed up again, for the next leg of our journey.  We were headed for Salt Lake City, and our drive took us through Rexburg.  As part of my secret plan to get the kids excited for college, I suggested we make a quick stop at BYU-Idaho.  It was also a reason to get out and stretch our legs for a few.

We got back in the car, and continued our drive south.  We finally stopped for lunch in a town called Malad, and found a park attached to an LDS church building where we had our picnic lunch.  Every time I saw a sign announcing something about the town, I really wanted to put up a "Y" sticker at the end of the name.  I think that would make a great prank- turn your town into Malady using vinyl stickers.

We eventually made it to our hotel and checked in for the evening.  It was a quiet day, if not a terribly reverent one.  We played the upbeat RM soundtrack in the car (it has rock versions of primary songs) so it was almost like we were keeping the Sabbath.  Almost.  At least we kind of rested up for the next bit of vacation.

Yellowstone, day two

Let me tell you, I don't know why we waited so long to buy an air mattress.  Foam pad, be gone.  I didn't wake up at 4 am with aching muscles.  This is a definite improvement.  Breakfast, on the other hand, needed some help.

In preparing to go camping, I thought I would make up my own pancake mix so all we had to do is add water and eggs.  It was a good idea, but the execution was lacking.  The powered milk, well, I can't remember when I opened it originally.  It did not mix in with the other ingredients at all, and when the pancakes were cooked up- there were these dried milk bombs that exploded and tasted gross in your mouth.  Sigh.  You win some, you lose some.

 After breakfast, we headed back to Yellowstone.  This time we headed north.

 Paint pots- I think.

 The landscape has filled in and green-ed up a lot since our last visit 10 years ago.  Elizabeth was a baby then.  Ryan and I agreed it's a lot easier to see Yellowstone without the umbrella stroller (for Emma, Elizabeth was in a front pack baby carrier).

And since I know everyone is as fascinated by bubbling mud as we are- here's a video of it.

We stopped for lunch and opted for crackers, apples, and cheese instead of another peanut butter sandwich.  There's only so much of that a person can take.  We had some inquisitive birds check us out.  

 They really liked our crumbs.  They were so close to us, I dared Ryan to put a cracker on his hat and see what would happen.  In the picture below, you can see the tail of the bird that stole that cracker right off Ryan's hat.

 Then we headed out to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  I haven't been to the real Grand Canyon, so I thought this one was pretty cool.

The clouds were amazing.  They provided nice contrast, I thought.

I figured this was a good place to play with the panorama feature.

 We didn't get close to the lower or upper falls.  But they were pretty, from what we could see.

 Pardon the random people.  I wish it wasn't rude to say, "Hey- move it.  I want a people-free shot."

 We are clearly getting tired by this point of the day.

Time for more driving.  The prairie is beautiful.

You can see it has started raining and hailing at this point in our day.

 Buffalo sighting below.  He was actually on the trail for quite a while, but we didn't want to get close enough for a good photo.  Getting charged by an angry bison was not the memory we wanted to take away from this trip.

 It rained on us quite a bit here.  You can see we were really prepared for it.

 More buffalo traffic jams.  They don't care if they walk down the middle of the highway and back up cars for a half mile.

 When we got back to our camp, the kids explored the creek and walking trail while the adults made dinner.

 Time for dessert- let's break out those marshmallows and chocolate.

Kids in sleeping bags, who didn't want to go to sleep.