Homeward Bound

We did play a bit in Sheridan at a park I visited a lot as a child. It is much improved now and the kids really had a good time playing.


To get home, we headed northwest to Great Falls, MT to visit my mom's family there. After the long and really not at all exciting drive (sorry Montana...it is a beautiful state but there are only so many cows and hay bales to point out on that stretch of road...), the kids enjoys some running around time in the yard of my aunt and uncle.

Finally, our last night was in Kellogg, Id. From our motel window we could watch the gondola pass by and down the road we took a tour of a gold mine that was mined in 1818 and is now owned and operated by a retired Butte, MT miner. It was fun...but a little claustrophobic for my liking.

Cabin Essence

After Yellowstone, we traveled to Powell WY for the night. It was a good place to stay because this little town has a very neat museum with a caboose and some tractors for kids to explore. It also had many artifacts my mom remembers having or remembers her mom and grandmother using. The curator's son, Josh, showed Camden around and I began to question his expertise when he grabbed a handful of dirt from the ground and held it out to me saying, "look....this is sand from the olden times..." It was fun.


We spent the next few days in the Big Horn Mountains in North Eastern Wyoming. It was a chance to stay in one place a few days, enjoy the mountains, and see my Grandpa Thrush for a few days. Here is the cabin where we stayed.



Camden, Grandma, Shelby, and Great Grandpa Thrush.

The lodge had a small pond that was open for fishing. It was peaceful to sit there and watch Camden try fishing with Grandpa Cochran.
The lodge also had a pool that Camden enjoyed. Shelby was too small to go swimming (potty trained kids only...) so she helped me do laundry and watch the mounted animal heads on the wall.

We saw a couple of moose, but didn't get a good picture of either one. We did, however, see lots of black tailed deer.Finally, Steamboat Rock stands out as you drive down the mountain toward Sheridan.

Yellowhead to Yellowstone

We spent 3 days traveling around Yellowstone Park. What a beautiful and fun place to visit. We started out at Mammoth Hot Springs from our motel in Gardiner.

Shelby enjoyed talking to the animals in the display cases at the Mammoth visitor's center.


At some point early in the trip, the lenses fell out of Camden's sunglasses. He still enjoyed wearing them saying, "look! I'm Batman!"

We briefly visited Norris Geyser Basin. Here Camden saw his first geyser erupt - Steamboat Geyser.



Then we headed to Old Faithful. We met up with Uncle Neil and watched Old Faithful erupt after enjoying some ice cream from the lodge.



We visited Yellowstone Falls and I gripped Camden's hand tightly as we peered over the edge of Yellowstone Canyon. The dropoff there is a doozy and made me nervous!! But, it is so beautiful.


Shelby enjoyed most of Yellowstone in the backpack. She seemed to like it and we just had to make sure we watched for her shoe to fall off, which it inevitably did, every time


One of the most fun parts of touring Yellowstone is watching for wildlife. Grandma and Grandpa got to see a Grizzly bear up close - we got to see some Black bears as well as buffalo and bighorn sheet...

Walk the Dinosaur

On July 5, we visited the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, MT. Here we are with Grandpa Cochran posing by a TRex skeleton replica.

It was full of fun things to see - they had a treasure hunting exhibit where the kids could search for treasure using a metal detector.

Camden had fun in his "new house" - a puppet theater.

They also had some artifacts specific to the region - some old covered wagons and cars, a replica of an old homestead building (something my great grandparents built to occupy in Gillette, WY), and this water pump that Camden enjoyed.

Then, of course, there were the dinosaurs. Here's what the website says about the museum: "The Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman is home to a world famous collection of dinosaur fossils and paleontology program. Dinosaur fossils are found in Montana rocks from the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods. Dinosaur dig crew led by paleontologist and curator Jack Horner, science advisor to the Jurassic Park films, excavate fossils which are prepared and studied at the Museum in Bozeman. Some of the most famous dinosaurs in the world such as Tyrannosaurus rex, Triceratops, and Deinonychus (very similar to Velociraptor) can be seen on display."

Shelby wasn't too impressed and by the time we got to the dinosaur exhibit, she was hungry and ready to go....but as all good parents do, we forced her to stay while she whimpered and clumsily tripped over he own feet through the exhibit.
This picture says it all - I asked Camden what he thought about the dinosaur exhibit and he said "those bones are TOO BIG!" What really impressed him was when he realized that a T Rex is bigger than an elephant.

Here's a real T Rex skeleton that was discovered in a river bed.

And here's Grandma Cochran helping show Camden some Triceratops bones.

4th of July

Did you know that lots of artists have songs titled "4th of July"? U2, Evanescence, Soundgarden...

ANYWAY, on July 3, we headed out on our big summer road trip. The car was packed with enough room to still see out the back window (an amazing feat) and everyone was excited to head out.

I packed things for the kids to do to keep busy in the car. I found this little pack of markers kept on a carabiner that I thought Camden would like and might actually help keep them all together. What I didn't know was that he'd use the markers to trace his hand on a paper and then get purple marker all across his face. Not too hard to get off, fortunately. Not the best picture, but you can sort of see the marker on one side of his face here.

Due to a few previous smaller road trip experiences, I worried Shelby would not make this trip much fun for anyone. She surprised us by being a very good traveler (most of the days anyway) and occupied her time with Bear, her water, some Color Wonder Markers, and a few beefy literary classics such as Brown Bear, Brown Bear.

On the evening of July 3, we stayed at a motel in Coeur D'Alene, annoyed some elderly patrons with our squirrely and tired children at the IHOP, and played at a local park. The next day was a long trip to Bozeman, MT and after not accounting for the time change, we were VERY behind schedule. Luckily, our hosts for the evening were very flexible and we enjoyed an evening with a friend from Matt's high school years in Bozeman. Camden got to experience his first trampoline (and first bloody nose), as well as his first sparkler and fireworks show. The neighborhood put on quite a show and we had a hard time leaving to head back to the motel for bed! We made it back to the motel just in time to see the last 10 minutes of the Bozeman fireworks show - and it was actually quite something to see.