Back on Line

Hi All
Finally we have internet and cell service. We could not find a campground on I 70 in Illinois, so we are in a super 8. Whats up with the National Parks and not having any electronic connections. It seems like so long ago I was able to connect with anyone.
I am going to catch the blog up in sections as we did things.
The last time I wrote we were leaving Mount Rushmore on Sat the 2nd of July, it was only a day drive to Yellowstone so we got there later that day. Wait til you see the pictures from there, snow everywhere driving in. The mountains were so beautiful with all the snow on them, until we got up close and personal with the snow. We had snow in our campground. Ellie said she couldn't believe we drove all this way to see snow, I couldn't believe she wouldn't even make a snowball. The days were really nice 80's but the nights went down to 35, burrrrrr. there was alot of flooding in Yellowstone, Lake Yellowstone was way over it's banks, as well as the rivers and streams. There were some roads that were closed. Yellowstone had just opened the week prior to us arriving, they had 117 feet of snow this year. Wow I thought we had a lot.
Sunday we went horse back riding, yes all three of us. Ellie of course was a natural, Paul and I on the other hand didn't. Ellie was thrilled out on the trail, she didn't want to come back. There was one part of the trail that we went on, it went right along the edge of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, very close, I was pretty nervous, not Ellie she loved it. As we were going out on the trail there were lots of Elk up behind the barn, very pretty animals.  We drove around to a couple of hot springs after horseback riding, at one of them there were two Bison standing right were everyone had to walk, of course we all were getting pictures. Ellie was so close she could have reached out and touched it, but didn't.
On Monday the 4th of July we took an 8 hour bus tour, we figured it would be nice for Paul to actually be able to look at the landscape instead of just the road. The tour went all around the upper portion of Yellowstone. We went to Old Faithful and saw it errupt twice. Very cool. We also went inside the Old Faithful in this is cool, it has staircases on each side of the lobby which you can climb up to the landing.
During the tour we saw lots of wild life, Bison, elk, otters, deer.