Yellowstone Birthday Escape

For my 30th birthday I wanted to do something big! I really wanted to spend a week in Florida with Kimberly, but my car had other plans for my vacation money. So I decided I wanted to go camping and geocaching in Yellowstone National Park for the weekend. I wanted Lori and Kurt and Brooklyn to come and they all agreed to. But when Kurt's parents found out we were going to be sleeping in a tent in bear country they said that Brooklyn wasn't allowed to go. I was bummed but at least we wouldn't have to worry about a little toddler the whole trip. Then Kurt decided he would stay home with Brooklyn since he doesn't like geocaching or hiking or walking or anything fun. I was bummed again but now we wouldn't have either baby slowing us down. 

So Lori and I set off on a great adventure to ring in my 30's!

We took off on Friday night and planned to get to our campsite at Madison campground in time to set up camp in the daylight and then hang out by the fire and roast marshmallows. But we were almost to West Yellowstone when we passed this sign:

We immediately made a U-turn and headed to the rodeo for the night.

We were super excited for the spontaneous rodeo!

A storm moved in and we got soaking wet and almost blown away.

The rodeo clown asked me to participate in something down in the ring and I enthusiastically volunteered. I didn't know it was a dance competition until I was down there and in front of the crowd. I should have won! I danced way better than that little kid. But he won the stupid frisbee anyways.

We got to meet the awesome (and pretty cute) cowboys afterwards.

Lori and I slept in way too long on Saturday morning so we ate a quick breakfast and hopped in the car for a long day of power caching. I had planned and mapped out all the earth caches and virtual caches that we were going to get in Yellowstone. Actual physical geocaches can't be hid in national parks, so there are earth caches or virtual caches. To log the find you have to go to a specific location, landmark, geological feature, etc. and take a picture and/or answer some questions about the place or thing. It's all very educational, which may not sound fun but it is. 

There is a buffalo lying on the ground behind us.

I loved climbing all over this pile of basalt ruins. I felt like a little kid.

It was way hotter than we thought it would be and we were sweating our boobs off running from cache to cache. So we found a river and changed into our swimsuits to play in it. I built a dam so we could sit in a pool of cool water. It was pretty much the greatest thing to happen to us.

Yellowstone Falls is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen in my life. 

This view was literally breathtaking. The colorful canyon, the falls, the sunset. Perfection. 

I found a herd of about 19 buffalo and was so excited I took off running across the parking lot to get closer to them. Lori stayed behind and took pictures of me acting crazy.

Our campground did a presentation at night in the amphitheater. It was about all the fires in Yellowstone throughout its history. It was super interesting.

Lori and I made delicious fajitas for dinner and then roasted marshmallows. I made her try a graham cracker-less s'more. It's a marshmallow with 2 pieces of chocolate sandwiching it. YUM!

The next morning we started a lot earlier and first thing we see on our way to a geocache was a freakin' grizzly bear! We stood across the river and watched it for a half hour. We were close enough to see its fur move as it walked. It had just killed something and was carrying a big piece of it around and then went behind a tree to eat it. It was pretty dangerous of us to be so close so we finally got out of there.

The mud pots are one of my favorite things in the park. I can't really explain why though.

This fumarole is called Red Spouter and it really is a brilliant red in the middle.

A view of Upper Geyser Basin and the Old Faithful Lodge.

One of the last caches we got was at Old Faithful.

I had such an incredible weekend that I really didn't want to go home. I seriously wanted to stay in Yellowstone with Lori and go geocaching for another week or month or 3. Throughout our 2 day stay we saw 25 buffalo, 15 elk, 4 coyotes, 2 sandhill cranes, 2 black bears, 1 grizzly bear and 1 other geocacher. We found 41 of the 50 US states license plates, 5 of the 13 Canadian provinces and found 31 of the 55 geocaches in the park.