Buffy the Buffalo

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We just got back from a week long road-trip to Yellowstone. It was really fun, super exhausting, and overall just great.

Top Highlights from our Summer Family Road Trip:

• The kids earned money to buy something at the gift shop. Sabrina chose the stuffed bison, because the “baby buffalos” were her favorite animals at Yellowstone. She did eventually settle on the name Buffy, and not Horny (thank goodness!)

• Edgar (5) bought himself a book called “Who Pooped in the Park.” It’s all about the poop you can find in Yellowstone. He was SO excited when he found (and identified) bison poop near one of our picnic spots. “Let’s see…it’s crunchy on the outside and gooey on the inside. I would say he has been gone for maybe 30. Or 100.” (Just for the record, he checked out the poop-patty with a stick–he did not eat it.)

• We saw a LOT of wildlife, which was totally awesome. We saw tons of bison, some pronghorn antelope, elk, a grizzly bear, a black bear, a red fox, a nesting family of osprey, and a moose. SO cool.

• We spent the majority of our time in the car for 6 days and the kids did awesome. We had our moments of crazy, but it was mostly great. My favorite thing in the car was listening to the book-on-CD of Frightful’s Mountian by Jean Craighead George. It kept the kids super quiet as they watched out the windows.

• Sabrina got carsick and threw up. She was in grandpa’s car and just too far away for me to be able to help clean her up, darn it. Children’s Dramamine is AWESOME. We kept her dosed the rest of the trip and had no problems.

Bottom…uh…Lowlights from our Summer Family Road Trip:

• There was almost no shade anywhere in Yellowstone. It was hot. The air was hot. The ground was hot. (So hot that a road melted while we were there). It was dry. It was high altitude. Sunblock was not enough.

• Part way through a short hike, Sabrina decided she was DONE. We were on a VERY crowded boardwalk with steaming hot ground and boiling water on either side of us. She was dragging her feet, bumping into people, stopping in the middle of the boardwalk, and generally making a nuisance of herself. So I held her hand. Sabrina interpreted this as the meanest mommy trapping her forever and threw a royal fit. She used her other hand to try and pry her hand from mine, throwing punches, dragging her feet, and yelling. A concerned gentleman in front of us kept turning around and giving me this look that said, “I’m pretty sure you are her mom and I feel bad for you…but maybe, just maybe you are a bad person and that poor little girl is being abused or kidnapped.” He not-so-subtly paused to let us pass, and then followed close behind me so he could keep an eye on me and my screaming child. It was lovely.

• On the way home, Sabrina decided she wanted to sing “the Frozen song” all the way through by herself. Her perfectionist brother just couldn’t stand hearing her sing the wrong words, and kept correctly her. So SHE kept starting over. This went on (with lots of tears and arguing) for most of an hour. Somehow I found the whole thing ridiculously hilarious and just laughed. Plus also, we brought earplugs.

Overall our family summer vacation was awesome. Are you taking a family summer vacation? Where does your family like to go?