Livingston's Way Out West: Day 8: Last day at Yellowstone

(Editor's Note: We are 3 hours away from home as I type this one out!)

Wednesday night, we were FREEZING. It got down to the low 30's and while we *thought* we had prepared "enough" for the cold (wearing hats and layers and brought our good sleeping bags), 30 degrees in July is still 30 degrees in July and it was pretty miserable by night #3. We had one more night to get through and it was going to be colder than the previous nights. While I had plenty of (cold) time to think on Wednesday night, I had a wonderful idea.... what if we did our full day at Yellowstone like we had planned, but after dinner--instead of going back to the campsite-- we started our drive back home?? We would still have our full day at Yellowstone, end our day with a very fancy celebratory dinner at the Yellowstone Lake Hotel, but after that, we would drive 2 hours to Cody, Wyoming and the Brandows would drive 3 hours to Idaho Falls, Idaho. There was truly no downside-- we would get the full day of plans, but avoid the freezing sleepless night and the angry, cold camp packing on Friday morning.

I tossed the idea out to Chris & Maggie and they were on board, so Maggie and I took off for the Canyon Lodge to get the $5/hour wifi to do a quick search for hotels. We both found a spot to sleep that night and when I say the celebration as we hit "submit" on the reservation form was great, I mean it. The celebration was GREAT. We hugged and jumped and did sparkle fingers and just could NOT believe that we wouldn't have to endure one more night of cold camping.

SO HAPPY! We are each wearing about 6 layers of clothes in this picture.

Back at the campsite, we told the kids and they had all been cold enough that they readily agreed to the plan. We started packing up and it took us almost 4 hours before we were ready to leave. (AG
AIN: CAMPING IS HARD WORK. YOU NEVER STOP WORKING.) Honestly, I don't know how we would've done that the next morning in the cold when we were trying to get to Mount Rushmore by a certain time on Friday.

We had time for one excursion before our dinner reservation-- We went to Norris Geyser Basin and enjoyed one more round of thermal features. (Some of us enjoyed it more than the others. I would be the one who enjoyed it less.... they all start to look the same after a mile or so. And we walked a lot of miles on those boardwalks.)

Vixen Geyser eruption

YSNP scenery is amazing-- so diverse -- mountains to desert to waterfalls to plains

Oh, these kids! They had such a good time. Mine are missing the Brandows already.

A few weeks ago, Maggie had a wonderful idea and the foresight to make us a dinner reservation on the last night of Yellowstone. She knew we would've had enough of camp food and it would be nice to not have to cook and clean up (again with the CAMPING IS A LOT OF WORK theme) one last time. At 5:00 we went to the Yellowstone Lake Hotel and had a very nice meal-- the bison tenderloin, huckleberry margaritas, lamb sliders, and other "local" favorites were all amazing. What was not amazing was how we looked and smelled. Honestly-- I was a little scared they wouldn't let us in. Greasy hair, dirty wrinkled clothes, and Will had visible dirt on his face and his shirt looked like it had been fished out of a dumpster. We looked like the country cousins who got invited to a nice meal but had no idea what was expected. After one round of huckleberry margaritas made with locally sourced tequila (who knew YSNP had locally sourced tequila!) we did not care how we looked or smelled and we honestly got a little slap happy and silly over the fact that we DID IT! We made it through this awesome, difficult, wonderful, dirty, memorable, exhausting hard work of a trip that we planned over 2 years ago. It was just what we wanted it to be. I think the kids will remember it forever and all the hard work, miles, cold, and danger will have been worth it.