Spontaneity

The Friday of Labor Day weekend, Todd called me from work, finished for the day, and wanted to bring the trailer home to go camping. I was a bit surprised, but I was game. We love to camp up American Fork Canyon at the Timpanoeke campground. So I dropped everything to run up and see if there were any campsites available. But, of course, there was nothing and all the other campsites in the area were full. By the time I called Todd back, he was on his way home with the trailer. He said that we would just pack it up and head somewhere for the long weekend.

We got things ready and packed and soon after the boys got home from school we jumped in the truck ready to go wherever the wind blew us. As we were driving toward the freeway, Todd noticed that the South-bound traffic was bumper to bumper and so the decision was made to head North instead. With the Atlas in my hands, I looked up the I-15 area to look for someplace we could go and camp. It ended up that we headed toward Yellowstone. By 9:30 we decided to go into Rexburg and stay in the Walmart parking lot for the night, knowing that we would never find any place that late on a Friday night not to mention the Labor Day weekend. It worked out great, though, because Todd had brought the fishing poles and so they went into Walmart to pick up bait and a few other things.

We headed up to W. Yellowstone to go into the park that way. On our way in we saw a red fox and a few buffalo. The boys were so anxious to get out and throw in their lines. We found a pull-off with trees around looking right off into the Firehole river. I opened up the trailer, got out a chair and got out my ipod and my book of Sudoku games and put my camera next to me to enjoy a peaceful afternoon.

The boys headed down with Todd to the river. They got kind of far from me to take any good pictures, so I jumped up and walked down to where they were. I snapped a bunch of pictures of them throwing in their lines and tickled just to be doing something fun. All of a sudden 4 Elk came walking across the river heading toward the bank where Gabe and I were sitting. The kept their distance but weren't a bit nervous about how close we were. It was fun just sitting in the grass and observing them.

After they walked away from us, we headed back to the trailer to have lunch. The boys just wanted to stay and fish and Todd and I were both content to stay since we didn't have any plans or expectations of this trip. Gabe and Todd decided to head out into the river right in front of where we were parked to continue fishing. Jake wanted to come to, so Todd picked him up onto his back and carried him across the deeper part to where he and Gabe were fishing. They said the river was at least 70 degrees and very pleasant to stand in.

I sat in my chair for a few minutes, but the wind picked up and I got a little chilly, so I went inside the trailer and sat on the couch with the door opened up looking out at the boys in the river. All of a sudden I looked up and saw another group of Elk crossing the river right in front of the boys.

It was so cool to watch them walking so close to them without too much care.

After awhile, we packed it back up to go see some things in the park, but the wind was getting kind of strong and worse than that, it was blowing around some dust.

So we only walked around a few places.

I liked the way the dead trees looked, kind of sillouetted against the grey sky.

this was kind of cool with the sun filtering through the dust cloud

We ended up at Old Faithful and bought the boys an ice cream and sat out in the wooden rockers until it was time to head over to watch the Geyser. By the time it started it was dark and the sky was gross and hard to see Old Faithful. We only stayed for a few minutes, then headed back to W. Yellowstone to see if there was any chance of finding a campground with vacancys.

Todd called our friends the Linton's that live in Missoula to see if they wanted to meet us somewhere. He told us of a place where there were some natural hotsprings. So we headed up to Bozeman and found another Walmart! We got there pretty late, so we just parked and put the boys and us to bed. During the night I totally enjoyed a great Thunderstorm.

In the morning we headed to Butte and stayed at a little resort with hotsprings and a pretty decent campground. The weather was cold and a bit miserable, but we swam and then had a nice dinner with the Linton's in their nice big motorcoach.

Anyway, to say the least it was a fun weekend with no expectations, which is why spontaneous trips like this are so fun and so memorable. I'm so glad we can do this kind of stuff from time to time to enjoy each other and keep things interesting!