Yellowstone: Part 1--Getting there is half the fun!(not)

As you can tell from the title of this post, we went to Yellowstone last week! Our trip started on Wednesday morning with a doctor's appointment. Yep. You read that right. Nate has had an awful rash on his hand for over a month now and I finally got him an appointment with a dermatologist, but the soonest they could see him was Wednesday morning at 8:15. So we made that our first stop.
One hour later we got the diagnosis. Nate has a type of fungus on his hand. Gross, I know. With prescription in hand, we headed up the road. The drive really wasn't bad until we got up into Idaho. I think they had more orange cones out than Utah does right now! We stopped in Idaho Falls with the intention of filling Nate's prescription and having a picnic lunch. Sadly, their local Walmart didn't have what Nate needed and neither did any other drug store in town. So we had a little picnic on the grass across from the Idaho Falls temple and then we got back on the road. We all really enjoyed the beautiful scenery of Idaho. Everything is so green and gorgeous!

We played some hide and seek. Behind this huge tree was Jonah's favorite spot to hide.

We made it to Island Park with relatively few delays. But then they were repaving the one and only road through Island park, which caused us a 30 minute stand still with already tired and anxious kiddos in the back seat. We filled up the time by playing I-spy and the rhyming game. I'm so grateful my children are easily entertained!
When we finally got up to West Yellowstone, we met up with Nate's parents and sisters at Baker's Hole Campground, just a few miles west of the town. We immediately put on the bug spray because there were a zillion mosquitoes. Then we got to work setting up camp. Jayne was being clingy and tired and wouldn't let anyone hold her but me. Thank you Jayne for getting me out of setting up the tent! So Nate's mom and sisters assisted him in getting our tent set up and everything unpacked.
The kids wanted to go see the river, so Aunt Emily and Aunt Amanda took them over there with some fishing poles for them to practice with. I say practice because they didn't have any hooks on them, so they couldn't actually catch any fish. Jonah and Lilly loved learning how to cast their line out in the water and reel it back in.


Lilly had her first experience with an outhouse. The bathrooms weren't too bad, but there were flies in the one closest to our camp. My sweet Lilly freaked out! She wouldn't go in there for anything. Thank goodness Grandma and Grandpa had brought their own little port-a-potty. Lilly loved that it was just her size and no flies buzzing around her.
Our first night was full of everything except sleep, at least for Nate and me. It took a while to get the kids to sleep and once we finally did, our noisy camping neighbors decided to light their fire and play their guitar and drink their beers and get all loud until the wee hours of the morning. Do people just have no sense of courtesy? We had these same neighbors for two of the three nights we were there. They would leave early in the morning and only leave their tent set up and then a bunch of them would show up around 9pm and start a fire and party. Apparently they never paid, so the camp host finally kicked them out Friday and gave away their spot.
Anyway, with the noisy neighbors and trying to keep all three kids warm in their sleeping bags(they are movers when they sleep so this was a big challenge), I think Nate and I maybe got one or two hours of sleep. Gotta love camping, right?

Anyhoo, stay tuned for our next, and much more exciting, installment: Part 2--Geysers, Tadpoles, & Wolves!