Yellowstone

 

The next morning we turned in our cabin key and said goodbye to Nevada City, then started the short drive to West Yellowstone. As we drove into the canyon we could see a large foggy cloud rolling it's way over the mountain tops and spilling out into the valley. I had never seen anything quite like it. By the time we came to Quake Lake we were in a beautiful foggy wonderland. We grabbed some breakfast at West Yellowstone and headed into the park. I told the kids to keep their eyes open for all kinds of animals and Ava asked me if the animals would be by the slides and monkey bars too... maybe the word "park" was a bit miss leading.:)

 Just inside the park we hit a horrible traffic jam...all because of these little guys....cute, but a 30 minute delay?! We were afraid the entire park would be jam packed but it wasn't too bad, except Old Faithful...that place is always faithfully packed.

So so beautiful!

 Notice how in the Old Faithful pictures neither Ava or Luke are actually looking at the geyser...no they are far to busy staring at the guy down the walkway from us who just spilled his drink and is swearing and yelling about it.  And there's me, "Ava! Luke! Look guys it's going off! Wow, isn't that so cool! Ava! Luke! Look at it!" Maybe if we hadn't driven around and around the parking lot looking for a parking spot we might have gotten a better view up closer by those other people and away from drink guy.
 Jeremy finally gave up and just dumped the kids and I off, so we wouldn't miss it erupting then have to wait forever for the next one. On our walk back to find Jeremy, Luke starts to cry saying that he wanted to watch Old Faithful with Daddy. (I guess I'm just not as fun as Daddy.) As it turned out Jeremy had found a parking spot right after dropping us off and got to watch it after all. So we met up with him and thought we'd enjoy a little walk together around the boardwalks behind Old Faithful, something I never remember doing before. And we just happened to be there when Castle geyser erupted. It lasted for about 40mins and goes off around 3-5pm every day, we were there about 4ish. Luke was so excited, he just couldn't believe our good fortune to be there at the exact time it went off!

I loved this view of Old Faithful Inn. One of these days I am going to spend the night there.:)

 Our last stop of the day was the lake. We could have spent an entire day just playing around on the beach.

 Done with a few pictures and they're out of there!

Ruthy enjoyed playing in the sand and eating the sand. She also pooped sand for the next few days.

 

We said goodbye to beautiful Yellowstone and headed over to Cody for dinner and then it was on to Byron.

Ghost Town Getaway

 We had the car loaded and ready to leave early on the 5th. It was a beautiful stormy day, perfect for driving. I love love love driving in the rain. The kids slept most of the trip, they were wore out from staying up late the night before doing fireworks. The drive was beautiful. We went up through Idaho...past Idaho Falls, Island Park and then on in to Montana to the small little ghost town that is Nevada City.

 My dad first took me to this cool old town almost 20 years ago (wow, that makes me feel really old) and really not that much has changed since then. You still check in at the old Nevada City Hotel and take your pick of which quaint little cabin you want to spend the night in. Behind the hotel is the creepy old ghost town museum. The weather was nice and cool so we changed into our jeans and sweatshirts before exploring. The old saloon complete with bullet holes in the bar is still there. (When I was younger we would play cards here and order sodas.)

 Part of the museum houses quite the collection of loud old music machines. We went through many quarters, dimes and nickles trying each one out.

My sisters and I use to dare each other at night to go touch the front door of the creepy old (and I'm sure haunted) house at the end of the road, it's now painted yellow so it didn't look quite as scary as I remember it, but it was still pretty darn creepy.:)

 After looking around we headed down the road for some gold panning. It was fun to learn the right way to pan for gold.  It's very relaxing to do and could be pretty addicting.:) We didn't have much luck finding any gold but we found lots of garnets and Luke found a Sapphire.

Holding their little vials full of treasure and standing in front of a cool old gold dredge.

 

The kids had fun exploring some of the old train cars.

 

After getting some ice cream from the little bakery next to our cabin we waited at the old train depot for a ride on the little train that runs back and forth from Virginia City to Nevada City.

 We ate dinner at the same little cafe in Virginia City that I ate at when I was younger. This was were I had my first buffalo burger as a kid and so of course we had to order buffalo burgers for the kids to try too.

 After dinner we walked around Virgina City. Luke  and Ava thought it was pretty cool to see where a band of outlaws were all hung. Then we drove up to a hill above the town to see the outlaw grave yard.

 We let the kids explore around the hotel that evening while the sunset and then ate peanut butter m&ms and watch a movie in the cabin.  I was too chicken this trip to run down to the old haunted house at the end of the lane and touch the door again before bed.:)

 

Our little lone car parked out in front of our cabin.

 Of course we had to take pictures of the two story outhouse at the back of the hotel.

One of my favorite things about Nevada City is that not many people go there, so you get to enjoy that feeling of being the only ones around. Which makes for a "deliciously scary" fun adventure.