Greetings from Yellowstone National Park

One winter night, my son Roger and his wife Karen planned a trip to Yellowstone for the summer. They had 3 girls who were 6, 8 and 10 years old. Since they had a big van, they asked Dad and me to go with them as we had just retired from farming. We had planned to leave on the last Thursday of July, 1992. Unexpectedly, Roger called at noon on Wednesday to say they had decided to leave that day at 5:00. “Be ready!” I had my Nimble Finger Club at my house, so we hurried with the meeting. The ladies left early, so Dad and I were ready to leave on time. We drove to Long Pine, Nebr. the first night. We stayed with Karen’s uncle. The next morning we drove to Mount Rushmore to see the faces. We checked for bells at the shop. The girls helped and we found nice ones for my bell collection.
From Mount Rushmore we drove on to Devil’s Tower. We marveled at the sight of it rising up so high out of the plains. We walked all the way around it with the girls.
Next we drove on to Cody, Wyoming, where we stayed at a motel overnight. In the morning, we had breakfast and were on our way to Yellowstone. We arrived at the entrance at about 9:00am. Roger stopped at the side of the road. We all got out and saw big horned sheep grazing on the slope below, also the beautiful view looking down at the winding road we had just been on. We stayed in three different cabins while we were at Yellowstone. One night Dad heard something. He thought someone was breaking in. He looked out and saw a buffalo rubbing on the cabin. We all watched for bears, but didn’t see any. We did see a herd of buffalo and a big antelope with a beautiful rack of horns. Once when we stopped to have a snack, the girls threw bread crusts out. The ground squirrels quickly came out and gobbled them up. They were very tame. I liked the waterfalls with the water crashing down. Roger and I walked the path to the top of the high waterfall. It was a pretty tough walk. We were both pretty tired when we got to the top. The others stayed at the bottom and waited for us to return. A funny thing happened when we were all out walking one morning. We came to a creek with water flowing. It had a bank on one side and was flat on the other side. Roger jumped the creek. He made it okay. “I can do it too” I thought. In the middle of the jump, I changed my mind. I missed the other side by about a foot. One foot landed in the water and the other foot made the bank. Everyone had a good laugh! We walked on the boardwalks to see the bubbling sulfur mud pots which were very smelly! We watched Old Faithful erupt. The geyser I enjoyed the most was one that we had to walk out on a dock to get close to. It wasn’t as high as Old Faithful but it was wider and you would get wet if you walked too far out on the dock. It was a great trip!

Sincerely,
Freda