"Adventure" to Yellowstone.

When you leave your house at 9:30AM and you're supposed to get to your destination by NOON but you don't end up getting there until 7:30 PM, it is safe to assume things aren't going according to plan.

Here's the story:

We left Friday morning heading up to Yellowstone with the whole fam. Nate hasn't been there since he was a boy so we thought it would be fun to go up there since it is "so close" for a little camping and sight seeing. We decided to go through Jackson Hole for a more scenic ride of the Grand Tetons. Here we are on top of the mountain looking down on Jackson. That is when things started going downhill......literally.

As we ventured down the mountain our car started overheating. We stopped at an auto repair shop and put 2 gallons of anti freeze in. Problem solved right? We continued to the next town until.....yep we were OVERHEATING again! 2 more gallons in and away we went again. Surely the problem is solved by now right?

30 miles outside of Jackson and we had to pull over yet AGAIN. STILL OVERHEATING. If you know me you know how much a HATE my van. Some choice words were said. Some over-reacting MAY have taken place. :) I may have told Nate that he has about 6 months to get me a new car or I am setting it ablaze or accidentally sending it off a cliff or something.

We had to turn around and head back to Jackson. Obviously something was VERY wrong. Just then a huge rain storm came upon us. This was a huge blessing because the temperature outside literally dropped about 30 degrees and we were able to make it back to Jackson without overheating again.

We pulled into a Dodge dealership and the nicest service man came out to see what the problem was. After replacing 2 hoses (one of which was cracked and causing the anti freeze to leak) and spending an entire hour fixing our car, he sent us on our way. Oh, by the way he didn't charge us a dime. Seriously? WHO DOES THAT?? Especially in this day in age. He said, "You guys have been through enough today....no charge." I told him he was my knight in shining armor. What a great guy....I'm still in awe. Perhaps he felt sorry for us since our poor boys were going CRAZY in the car for such a long time.

We thought about just bagging it and heading back home but after the major hookup from the service man we decided that our luck must be turning around so we opted to press on!

We're glad we did because we had a FANTASTIC time:

The Tetons really are majestic:

Here we are at our campsite:

Saturday we spent the day seeing lots of hot pots, geysers, mud pots, wild animals, and breathtaking views.

We LOVED watching Old Faithful. Parker's comments were the BEST: "Is this OLD geyser EVER going to go off? Why can't we just tell the ranger to TURN IT ON ALREADY? Maybe the geyser is a little bit shy and that is why it is scared to go off." All of the people around us were chuckling.

Our trip ended up being worth all of the crazy stress. We all came home absolutely exhausted!