Yellowstone National Park 2013

When I was first making my list, I was consulting (with permission) lists that other people had made on the Day Zero Project website.  There were a lot of travel goals people had set for themselves and while I didn't set any international travel goals, I did have a few I quickly added.  Yellowstone National Park was one that was easy to decide on for a couple of reasons.  First, it is relatively close to my parent's house and it is also good to have a plan for something to do when I am there.  Second, I have only been to Yellowstone National Park one other time in my life that I can remember.  I was probably 9 or 10 and it seems like a place that I should visit as an adult.

Last summer, my sister and I decided that it needed to be a whole Hoffman family vacation so we started planning.  We flew into Montana last Monday evening and my sister and her husband were already in Montana for another family (on Charlie's side) event.  My mom and dad rented a mini-van that would fit all seven of us and Tuesday morning we heading off to Yellowstone.

It was a really quick trip, just that day really.  We did stay the night outside the park and then drove back on Wednesday.  We didn't make the whole figure eight loop, we just did the lower loop, but we did get out and hike a few times on some easier trails.  We saw buffalo, which was Taelin's "must-see", and we saw a few elk but there were no moose or bears.

Taelin did really well considering it was pretty much an all day car ride.  She can now tell you what a geyser is and how stinky a mudpot is.  She learned this all because she is an official Junior Ranger thanks to all the hard work my sister did with Taelin to earn her badge.  There was quite a few activities that Taelin got to choose from like a Bingo game of sights within the park or keeping track of what animals we saw.  Lorie was determined that she was going to get that badge and she did.  It must have been the downpour that we were stuck in right before she got her badge that had our cameras all locked up tight, because we didn't get one picture of Taelin with her badge.

Here are a few photos from our trip!

One of the many buffalo we saw.
This picture was taken shortly before he decided to cross over the
 walkway we were using, cause us to hurry along as not to get trampled.  

We saw this elk along the lake on our way out of the park for the night.
You can always figure out that there is something to look at when up ahead of your
there are cars pulled off the road.

My sister and Charlie

Charlie, Joe and Taelin

A rare family picture.
(My FOX news loving dad would flip his lid if he
 knew I posted a picture of him was on the internet!)

One of the bigger waterfalls 

My mom wore her pedometer and logged 4.5 miles...and she didn't do
nearly the amount of hikes/walking the rest of us did.  Taelin was a trooper!

Taelin LOVES her LaLa!

In the lobby of the place that we stayed!
We didn't spend much time there other than to sleep.

Old Faithful
You kinda can't have a blog post about Yellowstone without it.

I think we went to 5 different stores looking for a stuffed buffalo that was like LaLa's Chippy.
 (Which had originally been purchased for Taelin when she was a baby but couldn't be
parted with once my sister got here.)
Luckily we found one that was kind of the same...
the differences we explained away by the fact that LaLa's Chippy has
his summer coast and Taelin's has her winter coat.