Day 6: MT -> WY -> ID

I spent much of this week on DC. Work is good, 2/3 of the kids are good (Cora is sick), Dallas is far too hot, and the joy of the DNC is taking over my whole life. Let's go back to my new favorite states that are much closer to Canada than I am.

Day 6 was the day we were in all three of the states that we'd touch on our trip! We slept in later than planned (this is a theme of the trip on any day that didn't involve an alarm clock and I'm not mad about it), woke up in our little cabin in Gardiner, Montana, packed up our minivan, and drove 200 miles southwest through Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

First, armed with our GuideAlong app and infrared thermometer, we explored the geological formations throughout Yellowstone.

Such a different part of the park from the Lamar Valley area we spent all our time the day before.

Yellowstone really is incredible in the variety of landscapes you can find in one park.

We saw geysers, bubbling mud points, boiling springs, and more.

All the kids mentioned how much the hot springs reminded us of the beautiful cenotes in Mexico, other than the temperature of course.

The thermometer gun was a HUGE hit. Note the only person smiling in the photo below is the one holding it. It was such a hit that the fighting over who got to hold it next and how many times that person could point it at something before it was no longer their turn became such that I got to use the thermometer quite a lot by the end of our explorations.

We walked the Boardwalk leading to Grand Prismatic, the largest hot spring in the US (3rd largest in the world!), and one that is particularly gorgeous in color thanks to the thermophilic bacteria that enjoy life at near-boiling temperatures.

We also took the hike to the Grand Prismatic Overlook which gave an even better perspective of the pool's beautiful coloring.

Unfortunately, thanks to the hike that was longer than promised, we JUST missed Old Faithful going off, and with the next scheduled eruption not for about 75 minutes, and with a few hours of driving left to go, we decided to move on and keep the geyser on our bucket lists. But the Old Faithful Inn was a cool stop and we were glad to have seen smaller geysers in other areas of the park (as well as the geysers we saw in Curacao years ago), so we were okay with it.

We continued our drive, eventually exiting Yellowstone and entering Grand Teton National Park. The lush, gorgeous landscape through the Grand Teton part of Wyoming was so different from what we'd just driven through at the south end of Yellowstone, it was just incredible to see so much in one ride.

I didn't take any pictures, but just took it in - the tall mountains jutting out from the ground, the lack of foothills, the lush green of the forests... just beautiful.

We stopped in Jackson for dinner, grabbing pizza at Yeah Buddy on a balcony looking over the Town Square.

The Town Square has four of these gigantic elk antler arches (bull elk shed their antlers each year), one at each corner, so of course we got a photo.

We got some very tasty ice cream and walked around town a bit more until I finally dragged James back to the car, noting we were already not going to get to the rental house until 10 p.m. We vowed to return soon though, even making a reservation for the following night at a particularly delicious-looking restaurant we passed by.

The last hour of our ride was through a lot of mountains and driven in complete darkness, which wasn't ideal after a very long day, and then we drove up to two wrong houses before we found the right one in Swan Valley, but we did finally make it about 10 pm and it was WORTH IT.

The home was built by a friend and former law partner of mine. She and her husband have four girls all between my kids' ages and I'd been following along her building journey since joining the firm. They're renting it out through Airbnb now and I can't recommend it more highly.

I can't imagine leaving these views for Dallas, especially in the summer, but as I always say, we all have to return to reality to work for our next vacation.

Despite four available bedrooms, all 3 kids hunkered down in the super cute bunk room.

The gameroom was a welcome hang out for our first family movie of the trip.

And Shuffleboard was fun.

It was so perfect that this was our last spot. Our first 6 days were spent in much smaller cabins without central air, which was absolutely fine since we were out exploring and adventuring all day for those parts of the trip. But for this last chapter, we wanted to just soak up the vacation part of our vacation. We slept in every day. We made food in the beautiful kitchen. We watched movies. We just enjoyed having a home- a home with spectacular views and no clutter or chores calling for me to do them.

We still explored and adventured, but we also just were. And that was pretty great too.