Natalie & Ryan: Entering The Park

I was particularly excited about this trip to Yellowstone. My family visited a lot when we were kids, and I have lots of fun memories with my parents. But I hadn't been in over ten years. I was hoping I would be able to see some of the few things I remember about my earlier trips.

Our first mistake was in our choice of clothing. The week before leaving, Ryan told me that the forecast showed snow the day before we went up, and rain for most of our time there. We packed for the cold, when what we got was beautiful, sunny, and hot. That upset me, because the only long-sleeve shirts that I have right now are my "fat" clothes. I felt especially fat the entire trip, because all my shirts were too big. And after looking through all the trip pictures, I realize now that 1) my pants were WAY too big (awesome!), and 2) I'm definitely not looking as thin as I've been feeling. But, that's another blog post...Back to the trip. We all packed sunscreen, but by the end of the trip, we all agreed that the spray-on sunscreen is crap! Everyone but Lilly got burned, even after reapplying several times. Poor Ryan has the farmer's tan from hell on the back of his arms.

Right as we pulled into the park, I was reminiscing with Ryan and Colton about how I remembered that we got stuck in "buffalo traffic" a lot when I visited in the past. I had lots of memories of bison about a foot from my car window, while my dad slowly drove down the street, trying not to hit them. Both Ryan and Colton mentioned that kind of buffalo encounter didn't happen as often as it used to. Not 5 minutes later, we were stuck behind a line of cars, as everyone tried to dodge the herd of about 80 buffalo that were walking the street. It was just like I remembered!! I could have reached out my window and touched them if I wanted. I asked Ryan to dare me to touch one, but he told me I was dumb. Pssh, he's no fun!

It took quite a while to get through that traffic, but once we did, we went to my favorite Yellowstone spot. Old Faithful!! We camped a lot when we visited with my dad, but after a while, we made our spot the Old Faithful Lodge. I still remember the sound of the old, creaky floors, the warmth of the giant fireplace, and the smell of the old wood. Oh, how I longed to see it again! I wouldn't have ever guessed that the next time I'd be back, would be with my own daughter. Before I could relive all my lodge memories, we spent most of the day walking to all of the geysers. Sadly, we were always just barely late to see the eruptions. It was still cool to see. And I enjoyed getting to hound our in-house geologist, Colton, with all my questions about geysers and thermal activity. I did break, according to Ryan, the cardinal rule...don't get ticks! I looked down at my shirt, and there was a tick crawling up it. Ewww!

Once we were finally able to go into the lodge, I was kind of sad. It had changed a ton. The floors were all redone, the grand fireplace wasn't lit and was blocked by a huge, metal grate. It was just missing that old-time feeling that my memories held. We didn't stay long. We had lunch in the parking lot and then started round two of our wandering. We just barely walked up to Old Faithful when it erupted. I was glad I didn't miss that one. While we were checking out the geysers, the most random thing happened. I was pushing Lilly around in her stroller, when I decided to stop to let a group of Asian tourists pass by. As they passed by, they each turned and looked into the stroller to see the baby. The last woman that walked by, pulled out her camera and took a few pictures of Lilly. Yep, that's right. My baby is so cute, even foreign tourists take pictures of her! Ha! I couldn't believe it.

I wanted to run into the gift shops real fast, because there was a book that I wanted to get Lilly. My mom and Jeff visit Yellowstone a lot, and she told me about a book that she wanted to get for Lilly, but regretted that she didn't. It's called "Who Pooped in the Park?" Ha! Oh, I found it, and yes, I bought it. Not only that, I bought the matching shirt! I wanted Lilly to have an over-sized jammie shirt, and that one was perfect! I won't lie, I felt like a creep buying more than one poop item, but the sweet checkout lady assured me that the book was not only well-done, but it had actually helped her identify that she saw bear poop once. Oh, good, I was worried it would mislead me.

Okay, now I want to tell about my #1 favorite memory from this trip. Not only did I want to get Lilly the poop book, I wanted to get her a special Yellowstone stuffed animal. We went over to the kid section and started picking out the ones we liked. I started with the buffalo. Since that was all we'd seen so far, I thought it was very appropriate. In my mind, there was no way Lilly wouldn't want it, since she loves all stuffed animals. Well, as I handed it to her, she pulled back and looked scared. I held it there for a second and then went "rawr!" and pushed it at her. She jumped and started to cry!! After that, every single stuffed animal we showed her made her cringe in fear. She is apparently very loyal to her bear-bear. Ha! I feel terrible that I scared her, but it's so funny that she distinguishes stranger stuffed animals from her bear. Mom, you would have died!

After another quick stop off at other geyser hotspots, we went to one of the Goodrich's favorite picnic spots to have dinner. It was beautiful! It was right on the edge of a meadow and a river. While our tinfoil dinners cooked, Lilly and I held hands and wandered the meadow, picking wild flowers. She was so curious! Her favorite was poking the dandelion poofs until all the seeds came off. She had a blast, and I think that was one of my favorite, quiet, alone times with Lilly. She just held onto my hand tight, and listened as I told her about flowers. I love watching her learn!

I LOVED all the calves. They stuck by their mommies.

What you can't see behind us is an entire meadow, full of buffalo

Even though we didn't see very much wildlife (other than what we almost hit with our car), I really liked getting to see their tracks in the mud around the geysers. This was a huge bear print.

Mr. Chipmunk

I went on a dorky picture tangent. I just missed getting this picture with a full-blown Old Faithful eruption. It ended up just looking like I had bad breath.

Ryan positioned me so that it would look like I was kissing the bison. I was so awkwardly positioned, I couldn't get my lips close enough to it, so I just looked stupid.