One Grand Adventure: Part 3

Last time, on One Grand Adventure... we had finally gotten a campsite just outside of Yellowstone, set up our tent and set off for some fun in the park. We saw some hot springs and hiked to a waterfall. After hiking back down, we headed back to our campsite to grill some burgers and enjoy a relaxing evening. Now that you're caught up, let's return to the action.

We enjoyed a leisurely drive back out of the park and to the campground. As we pull up to our site, we notice that our tent doesn't look quite right. One side seems to be drooping. As we get closer we see that the aluminum center tent pole is snapped in half! We looked around to the rest of the tents in the area and they all appear to be unscathed so we're stumped. Oh, and Tyler is very, very angry. This tent that we spent so much of our hard-earned money on has failed us on its third day of use! Then we realize that we are in a very small town in a very isolated area; this town didn't even have a hardware store. We are only on day three of our five straight days of tent camping; how are we going to fix this and be able to enjoy the rest of our vacation? We started calling around. We called a rafting company whose website touted that it also had camping supplies. They said that they had tent stakes but no tent poles; maybe try the fishing shop. We went to the fishing shop only to see that they were closed. We finally ended up at the grocery store where Tyler bought two plungers. When we got back to the site, Tyler pulled the rubber ends off the plungers and used the sticks and duct tape to make a sort of splint for the broken pole. Luckily, that did the trick for the rest of the trip.  Our tent, while maybe not as lovely as before, was still sturdy and useful. Phew! As for the mystery of why our tent pole broke, that was solved later that evening. We heard a couple of other campers talking about the crazy windstorm that had come through during the afternoon. Apparently all the tents in the area had been blown down (although all had also been put back up by the time we got there). The tent in the site next to us had even blown up over the fence and almost ended up in the river! Craziness!

The kids after night three. Albert was at least partially on an air mattress, just not his own.

Elias was happily asleep with his face on the cold, hard ground.

 Albert enjoying his morning coffee.

Apparently both Elias and Albert like coffee and both would drink a bit with Tyler every morning.

Breakfast time!

Back in Yellowstone, this was our first glimpse of Yellowstone's Grand Canyon.

 We have a somewhat similar picture of Tyler with Asher and Elias on our trip to Niagara Falls.

 Looking at another waterfall.

Hiking down to the base of the waterfall.

Unfortunately, the trail that took you all the way to the base of the waterfall was closed for repairs, but we did see a way to get down to the river. It was a bit steep and loose but doable for at least the older kids (Tyler helped the rest).

Look at that beast, sunning itself on a large rock in the river!

The view from the aforementioned rock.

The kids wadding into the river. It was cold!

One of the pictures I was taking.

The kids wanted to go out on the rock so Tyler helped them.

All our cuties on the rock. Where's Tyler?

Helping them back to shore.

Who can guess what will happen next?

Number 2 of forced selfie.

A very real family picture.

So guess who sat down in the river and then went and sat down on the shore?

Lunch time back up at the top of the hiking trail. Here the kids made friends with some bikers and we found a car with a Hawaii license plate (only to discover that it's back plate didn't match so we couldn't count it in our epic license plate game).

This picture makes me laugh. Asher was trying to take a picture of Addilyn and me together. Whoops!
I was going to try to do the whole day but we already have so many pictures that I guess we'll have to stop here.
Tune in next time to see where we go next!