The next day was Wednesday, which normally back home would be a “distance learning day.” As we were in a different time zone, we brought a Chromebook (or two…) along so Calvin and Meg could join in on their morning calls if they/we were available. It turned out that Calvin was the only one needed that morning. He had a good time telling his classmates about what he’d seen so far, but then he had to do some math problems, so his fun was short lived.
We hit the road to explore another end of the park, aiming for Mammoth Hot Springs. We stopped at a few hydrothermal features on the way, as the brisk, cool air of the morning made for some nice views. There were relatively few clouds in the sky this time, too, so the weather overall was substantially better for viewing the park!
Mammoth Hot Springs provided some interesting rock formations called travertine (which is, well, calcium carbonate…), where minerals bubbled up from beneath the surface for years, leading to neat terraces. There were a decent number of folks at Mammoth, so it started getting more difficult to avoid people. Thankfully, we were outside, so we weren’t all that concerned about the ongoing pandemic.
There was limited hiking around Mammoth, most of which was on boardwalks (some of which got kinda steep), but we did find a trail/road combo that took us away from all the people.
The kids dealt with it well initially, but grew tired as the morning drew on. We were also fighting with the weather changes a bit, where we had layers on like the day before, but this time we felt the heat of the sun, so we had to lose some layers and carry them with us. Not a big deal, but somewhat unexpected given the weather experience from just a day before!
After we finished up at Mammoth Hot Springs, we went into the nearby town for a picnic lunch and some ice cream from the general store. It was a beautiful day, so it was a nice opportunity to regroup a bit and decide what the rest of the day would entail.
While we were at Mammoth Hot Springs, we also finally saw some elk. We saw one when we first approached the initial travertine formation, but we saw more in the town outside of the formations. In all, we probably saw 6 or 7 elk while we were in that area.
While we were out in the northern-ish part of the park, we figured we should head toward the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, which gets its name for obvious reasons. Given that we’ve actually been to the Grand Canyon, the Yellowstone version wasn’t quite as impressive, but we still got some great views in!
Unfortunately, due to the fact that half the park was still shut down, we were limited in what we could do. Brooke wanted to hike down to the bottom of the canyon, but sadly that wasn’t an option. To be fair, the trails around this area were pretty slushy still, so even if we had gone, it would have gotten messy…
Still, the view of the waterfalls was pretty nice. 🙂
That night, Brooke had the idea that we should do “TV dinners.” We had a microwave and fridge, so it provided a relatively cheap option while also giving everyone something, er….different…for dinner on this trip.
Calvin had fish sticks and Meg had a rigatoni dish. They were pretty pleased with this arrangement, though personally, I feel like my chicken alfredo wasn’t all that impressive. It was fine, but…not really as much as I’d want for dinner. Maybe lunch. Not dinner. Ah well.
As with the other nights on this trip, we capped off the evening playing Hearts. It’s a game that I’d played before, though it’d been years, but we figured Calvin would be old enough to handle it. For the most part, he could do it, but keeping his attention (and dealing with strategy…) was still challenging. Brooke was winning by a lot for the first night, but Meg took over and ended up absolutely destroying everyone in the end. She still won’t tell us what her strategy was…
More next time!