Sherri invited our family to stay at their cabin with them in Island Park on Labor Day weekend. We hear about people going to Island Park all the time, I swear half the people here have a place in Island Park. But I was not really sure what exactly everyone did in Island Park, other than riding four-wheelers or razors or snowmobiles. But I like the outdoors and I like Sherri and we had no other plans so I asked Ryan if he was interested and I was pleasantly surprised when he said yes. Ryan is a bit of a home body on one hand, meaning he prefers to be relaxing at home than at someone else's house for long periods of time. But he also enjoys the outdoors a lot too. So we went! My kids were not sure what to expect, but they had heard enough about Island Park they were excited. Sherri has three boys, one is about Dylan's age, one is Sadie's age, and one is a bit older than Kaden. You would think with how close Sherri and I are, that our kids would know each other well, but they do not. They do know each other, but they have not been forced to hang out much. And Sadie and Beckett have never had a class together until this year, though Beckett hangs out with the group of boys that Sadie talked to a lot last year. Anyway, my point is I had no idea what to expect.
The cabin was fun and the forest around it was fun to explore. Dylan had a great time playing monopoly and other games with Sherri's boys. Sadie and Kaden hung out playing around in the cabin with stuffed animals and finding hiding spots, etc. And Kylee mostly hung out with me and Sherri, or spent time by herself. But she was a good sport, even hung out with Sadie a bit.
One of the nights we had a big game of capture the flag, Overtons vs Andersons. We had glow sticks on and the flag was a glowing stick. It was fun. We played two games, each winning once, then split up into mixed teams. Kylee ended up rolling her ankle trying to run down the stair at one point so she was not happy. But the rest of us had fun.
We spent Saturday in West Yellowstone going to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. It was cool! The younger kids got to feed the bears. They were given little buckets with food (fruits and dog food basically) that they hid in the rocks. Then we watched as the bears came out and searched for the food. Kaden's favorite animal is a wolf so he was excited to see the wolves up close. They had a bunch of bald eagles, and some other birds, along with otters which are my favorite. We also learned about bear-proofing garbage cans and gardens and stuff. Luckily Ammon is not bear country, but Island Park definitely is! Sherri and I went for a couple runs but we were careful to avoid the back roads where bears (or maybe the same bear) have been spotted recently. We stayed on the main roads.
Afterwards we shopped in West Yellowstone for awhile. Kaden wanted to pick out a new stuffed animal (he and Sadie seem to get one every time we travel anywhere) and then we found a store full of rocks and crystals and all sorts of treasures where Kaden spent an hour trying to decide which rock he wanted. Finally we went home and had dinner, and then went swimming for a bit. The pool was chilly so Ryan and Kylee preferred to hang out in the sauna (and they were not thrilled with me trying to take a picture to document it). The hottub was full of mostly teenagers so I didn't end up putting my swimsuit on at all (plus, I had just washed my hair so I wasn't looking forward to swimming).
The next day we spent at Yellowstone, along with millions of other people. Seriously, it was so crowded. We spent way too much time trying to find parking in some of the spots, and the short hike we did was super crowded (and so many kids complained! You would think we were climbing table rock. It was seriously a mile of gradual hill, and they were super whiny. I assume because of lack of sleep.) I think it was Grand Prismatic, but we hiked up above it so we could look down on it, which was cool. Then we went to Old Faithful. It's funny, we had two goals heading into Yellowstone. We wanted to find the last license plate in our game. Dylan started License Plate Bingo when we went to Oregon in July 2020. We found a lot there, including Hawaii. I found a lot in Grand Teton, and when I was in Florida I found Rhode Island. We were only missing West Virginia and Delaware and we randomly saw West Virginia this summer on the freeway by Pocatello. So we only needed Delaware. And Sherri found it for us! Sherri wanted to find a Grizzly bear in the wild. We have seen a few black bears in the wild now, but no grizzly. We had plans to drive down past Old Faithful past West Thumb and hit Yellowstone's grand canyon on our way out, But it took us so long to even get to Old Faithful, it was getting very late. We would've been there until dark for sure if we kept with our plan. And the kids were a bit whiny. So we cut our losses and headed back the way we came, hoping to avoid the traffic at Madison Junction when everyone is trying to leave. Well, we made it through Madison Junction just fine but we came to a standstill a couple miles from the park exit. And we stayed there for an hour or more. It was rough. We had no idea what was happening. But there were no cars coming in the oncoming lane, until a couple police cars came through. We knew something had happened, this wasn't normal traffic. Finally we passed an accident, two cars hit pretty hard. But we finally made it through and home in time to make dinner.
Surprisingly my kids did not want to leave the cabin. And they wanted to know when we could come back. Kylee and Sadie wanted to include the Summers family next time (they had been invited this time but had other plans) but they had so much fun they wanted to come back every weekend. Sadie and Beckett finally started hanging out and being friends, where before they always acted all awkward (because Beckett's friends are all into girls and make it weird, but Sadie and Beckett are not like that) so Sherri and I called that a win! We tried to explain that it's actually Sherri's parents' cabin and we can't use it whenever we want, and also it's a lot of work to pack all the food to come up so we can't do it on a regular weekend, plus we have soccer games every Saturday so it really doesn't work. But it's good they had a great time and want to come back because I do too. Ryan was ready to go by Monday morning just because he felt like he had things to do at home to be productive, and I felt the same. We got cleaned up and headed out.
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