Day 13- Yellowstone National Park

right on the side of the road next to our car!

The East Entrance

Snow in the mountains!

The sunset at 9:30 at night

I don’t even know where to begin.  Today has just been an awesome experience.  First, we all slept in until 9am which was such a treat.  It was probably due to the fact that we could actually make the hotel room dark and that we were sleeping in nice comfy beds!  We took our time leaving Cody.  We got gas, groceries and did two huge loads of laundry.  Upon leaving Cody, we drove along the Shoshone River through the Shoshone National Forest.  Again, just beautiful country.  We arrived at the East entrance of Yellowstone at around 4 pm.  We were not in the park 30 minutes before we saw our first bison.  It was just grazing right next to the road. I took the picture sitting in the car about 10 feet from it!  Within the first hour we had probably seen at least 100 buffalo all grazing in big, open areas.  We got to our campground around 5 pm and set up in the rain.  The forecast for the next three days includes on and off rain.  Although, it is not our first choice, rain is desperately needed out here.  It will definitely help with the forest fire situations.  Once we were set up, we played a few games of  “go fish” and “rummy” while waiting the rain out.  At about 7 we took a drive to the Canyon visitor and education center.  It is a beautiful facility with great exhibits.  Here, the boys picked up their instructions for earning their next Junior Ranger badge. We also found out that the ranger talk was going to be on owls at 9:30 pm. We went out for a drive to see what animals we could find.  We saw plenty of bison, Canadian geese, and elk.   It is mating season for the buffalo so we saw two males butting heads at one point! Another walked right across the road in front of us.  We couldn’t believe our luck with all that we saw.  Back at the education center we went to the talk on owls.  I was impressed with all that Duncan and Douglas both already knew about them.  Along with bear, wolves, and coyotes, owls are a main predator in the park. We arrived back at our tent at 10:30.  We are now laying in bed listening to the coyotes howl.  All of our food is locked up in the car.  It is 45 degrees and we are all wearing winter pajamas, fleece blankets, sleeping bags, and socks!  It is about a 50 degree difference from all of our previous days.  I do not love cold nights in tents but I wouldn’t trade this experience for anything!