We arrived at Great Sand Dunes National Park on a very windy afternoon. The sun was out and it was a lovely temperature but when we thought of exploring the sand dunes in high winds, it didn’t sound too appealing. Instead we decided to hang out in the campground, let the girls play, relax and catch up on some internet stuff like this blog. Internet is fairly hard to come by so we try to take advantage when we do have it.
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We were super excited to see the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde National Park. We actually passed right by this park on last year’s trip, but decided not to stop since it was November and the tours had already shut down for the season. This year we were early enough that the main tour was still running. On the way to the park, we made a stop at Canyons of the Ancients National Monument as well.
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Last year we visited the Island in the Sky district of Canyonlands National Park, so we thought that this year we would check out the lower section, the Needles District.
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We had had several people tell us that Dinosaur National Monument was well-worth the trip, but we didn’t really know anything more about it than it was a place where dinosaur fossils had been found. We assumed there would be a few fossils on display but the actual exhibit was far cooler than what we had imagined.
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We only got to spend about a day and half at Grand Teton National Park– a half day as were were driving through from Yellowstone, and another full day after. What we saw was a beautiful– it would be a great park top come back to when the girls are older to do one of the more strenuous mountain hikes.
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We chose to take it semi-easy on our last full day in Yellowstone as we were feeling like every morning we rushed out the door and every evening we were racing back to make dinner. We were looking forward to putting some time into our dinner without feeling rushed.
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We were excited for our first day in the Old Faithful area. Up until this point the geysers we had seen were either just small bubblers or were venting only steam at the time .. On this day, however, we saw 4 eruptions (ok, 3 of them were the same geyser, but still awesome!)
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We made it to Lamar Valley!! Justin and I prepped and packed the night before and we arrived in the mob filled Lamer Valley (along with a hundred others) just as the sun was rising. Just on time with no wrong turns! Second time’s a charm. 😉
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The girls both finally slept through the night! The two previous nights our 4 year old was up for 3 hours in night for reasons unknown to us which, after hours of trying other options, again resulted in me cramming myself into her bed to sleep for the remainder of the night. So, after her first good nights sleep in a while we chose to wake her up before dawn to attempt a peak at some wolves in Lamer Valley. Not the best parenting choice but we were hopeful she would recover from lack of sleep.
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For our adventuring this day we decided to go to Tower Roosevelt and down into Canyon Valley. We were originally thinking of checking out this area on our travel day from Mammoth campground to Grant but we rethought that and thought it was wiser to only bring Azul to fit in more places.
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