Something cool just happened

I'm going to interrupt my recaps about our Yellowstone Trip with some really awesome news. But I'm kind of afraid of saying it out loud because it just doesn't seem real yet. So maybe I'll just whisper it. 

The student loans are paid off. 

Did you catch that?

I'll say it louder. 

Brandon's student loans are paid off.

How was that? Did you hear it yet?  Let's try again.

Brandon's student loans are paid off. 

It still doesn't seem real. 

Let's try some visual representations and see if that works. Here's our good old debt payoff tracker that I made in 2011. Yes, a whole decade ago.  Back then I had high hopes of getting the student loans paid off quickly.  The tracker accounted for a 15 year payoff plan, but I was hoping for something like 10 years or even less. Well, life got in the way and we didn't get Brandon's loans paid off as fast as I'd hoped. Up until a few weeks ago I was assuming we'd be paying on these loans for 8 more years. 

I didn't want to pay the loans for 8 more years, but without a drastic increase in either mine or Brandon's income we just couldn't see a way to pay the loans faster.  We'd already refinanced his private loans at the beginning of 2020. That had reduced the interest rate and kept the payment amounts from increasing each year.  There really wasn't anything else we could do.  

The monthly payment was still a big chunk of our budget so I was looking for ways to save money in other areas of our budget.  One place I knew we could save money was in our house payment. 

When we bought our house 2 years ago we'd had to have Private Mortgage Insurance as part of our monthly house payment. It was because we didn't have a large down payment. I knew we could eventually refinance the mortgage and get rid of the PMI after we'd built up some equity.  I assumed we'd do that around the 5 year mark.  

I reconsidered that plan when we got our Tax Assessment.  According to the county our house had gone up in value by quite a bit. I was wondering if we had enough equity to get rid of the PMI now. 

But I was still reluctant to actually start the refinance process.  Buying the house had been one of the most stressful experiences of my life and a lot of that stress was from the financing. I was not looking forward to repeating that experience. 

Somehow I ended up talking about this with my friend Sarah when I was visiting her in Idaho Falls at the end of June. She was like, "Why are you waiting? You are so good with money.  You know this is a good idea.  You should do it."  And I was like, "Well when you put it that way I guess I will."

With Sarah's urging in my mind I called our loan financing company and started the process.  It actually was way simpler than I thought it would be. Turns out when you already have a mortgage people trust you to refinance that mortgage.

We did run into a snafu with Brandon's work's ability to produce accurate paycheck information.  But even that eventually worked out.  

We had the house appraised again and the appraisal came in way higher than the County Assessment. It was even higher than the loan companies quick guestimate had been. 

This whole time I'd been thinking we'd save like $200 on our mortgage.  We'd get rid of the PMI and we'd have a lower interest rate.  And I was perfectly happy with that.  

Then I got a call from the guy helping us with the refi.  He explained that we'd still have to have an FHA loan and pay the PMI unless we could reduce our debt to asset ratio.  He said, "What we can do is roll your car loan into the mortgage and then you can do a conventional loan."

I replied with, "We don't have a car loan."

He responded with, "Then what is this loan for $____ that you pay each month."  

And that's when it all clicked for me.  He was talking about the private student loans. And he was talking about paying them off along with the refinance. 

Of course we wanted to do that!

He went over the numbers with me.  When all was said and done we'd have a mortgage payment that was about $10 less than what we were paying currently. But we'd have a lower interest rate, no PMI, and no monthly student loan payment.  We were saving money all around. 

It felt like a miracle.

And gosh, we needed a miracle. Two years ago when we bought this house it had seemed like such a dumb idea to get into more debt when we already had a ton of debt. And then Brandon lost his job. It felt like we'd made such a mistake committing ourselves to a home that wasn't even in a place where Brandon could work.  But we'd felt right about living in Twin Falls and buying the house.  So even though it didn't really make sense I hoped it would all work out.  

And it did work out.  This house ended up being such a good investment that two years later helped us out tremendously. 

Brandon and I signed the papers the Friday after we came home from Yellowstone. And the loan funded last week. I checked our student loan account today and saw a beautiful $0 on the screen. 

Those darn loans are gone. GONE!

(I mean technically they are in our mortgage now, but since that payment is basically the same and the student loan payment is $0 I think its fine to say they are gone.)

Brandon and I went downstairs and pulled little squares off the tracker. Oh that felt good!

Here's how it looks now. I haven't seen this side of the tracker in a decade.  

And I know you must be wondering why there are still squares on the tracker.  Well technically not all the loans are paid off.  Remember, Brandon went to college twice.  The big loans that we've had for years are from his first Bachelors Degree. He took out those loans before he ever even met me. Those are the loans that have finally been paid off. 

When Brandon went back to school at ISU in 2017 we were in a bit of a financial pinch.  He got money for tuition and our housing from the Post 9/11 GI Bill.  But he still needed to buy tools for school.  And those weren't cheap.  Plus we were still paying on the first student loans.  We'd already used up all our options for forbearance for those loans. So Brandon took out two small loans to pay for his tools and to pay for the monthly payment on the student loans he already had. It completely sucked, but it was the best option we had. 

The good news about those new loans is that they were Federal loans. And Federal loans have better terms than private loans.  One nice feature is that the Federal Government hasn't been requiring payment or charging interest on the federal loans since the beginning of Covid. Another nice feature is that the federal government can decide to discharge these loans. 

As of right now there haven't been any major announcements about student loan forgiveness, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some sort of forgiveness approved in the run up to the 2024 presidential election or maybe even the 2022 midterms. So it's entirely possible these loans may disappear on their own.

Even if there isn't Federal Student Loan Forgiveness I'm not too worried about these loans.  Their monthly payment is a tenth of what we were paying with the big loans. They won't be a huge inconvenience in our budget if/when we do have to start paying on them again.

This feels like a good spot to drop this chart.  This shows how the loans grew while Brandon was in school and how they have (slowly) shrunk as we've paid them off. I love that giant drop off between 2020 and 2021.

So what now? Are we going to book a trip to Reunion Island like we'd always said we would when the loans were gone?

We don't have anything big planned yet. We have a lot of other financial obligations to worry about.  There's the mortgage of course. And we'll need a new car in the next year or two. Plus we are coming up to the teenage years with our kids. We'll have to worry about paying for braces, and extra curricular activities.  And international travel is all sorts of unpredictable now anyway.  

In all honestly, I literally don't know how to think about life without the student loans.  They have been part of my relationship with Brandon the whole time we've known each other.  EVERY decision has involved the fact that we have to make a monthly student loan payment. So without the loans the whole calculus of our lives has changed. 

So right now we are just going to enjoy the fact that we have some financial breathing room for the first time in a long time.

Yellowstone 2021: Day 3 - Geyser Basins Part 1

Thanks to COVID I had been a little hesitant to make any solid plans for this trip. I'd made the camping reservations, in February, but I didn't put much thought into what we would do each day until a week before the trip. 

When we did get around to making daily itineraries, Brandon and I sat down with a piece of paper and started listing the things we wanted to see as well as some of the things we didn't care to see (on this trip.) Some things were off the list by default - the Dunraven Pass was closed which meant hiking Mt Washburn wasn't even an option. Other things were off the list because of time - as much as we love Lone Star Geyser it was just too long of a hike. But many things were on the list for sure.  It went without saying that we would go see Old Faithful and many of the other geysers. 

We knew from past experience that it would be impossible to see all the geysers we wanted to see in one day.  Part of that was because of the walking distance between all the geysers, but most of it was the parking lots that became jammed full of cars for most of the day. We had small windows of opportunity between sunrise and 10:00 am and then from 5:00 pm to sunset to try to see as much as possible.  Between 10:00 and 5:00 tourists would be jamming the parking lots and the trails.  

So we decided to go into the geyser areas around Old Faithful twice.  We'd drive down there once on Sunday and see somethings.  And then we'd drive that same way again on Monday. Yes, it was a little redundant to travel the same route twice, but it was the best plan we had. 

And I'm glad we made that plan.  Because on Sunday morning I had to use some of our precious morning time to do laundry and I would have been really stressed out about it if I'd felt I was loosing out on our only chance to see the geysers. 

The laundry room at the Canyon Campground didn't open until 8:00. I was tempted to get up early and go to the laundry room at either the employee campground or the Canyon Hotel so that we could be on the road sooner. I did wake up early, but I didn't get out of bed. The kids had walked a lot the day before and we had more walking planned for this day. They needed this sleep, and I realized if I got up early they would probably wake up too. 

So I laid in bed and through about how great it was to be on vacation.  I was also able to use my mobile data and check my email. This was kind of cool in its own right.  Four years ago when I lived in the park I was always desperate for an internet connection. There was employee Wi-Fi, but it was spotty at best.  In order to work on my blog or register the kids for school I'd had to get up at 4:00 am, drive to the employee dorms, and sit in the lobby to use the internet there. By 6:00 when the other employees started waking up the internet would slow down again. 

I was also keenly aware of when we would be outside the park and where the free Wi-Fi connections were.  There was free Wi-Fi at the city park in West, there was free Wi-Fi at the visitor center in Mammoth, but it was also spotty. Once I even went to the LDS church in Gardener to use the Wi-Fi and download a whole slew of podcasts. Thankfully, during the second half of the summer I was promoted and had access to the internet on the work computer at Roosevelt.  That was very useful when we were looking for a rental in Pocatello.

I don't know what the mobile data capabilities were in Yellowstone 4 years ago - but whatever they were they were too expensive for me at the time.  But mobile data is much cheaper now.  I have a prepaid Verizon plan with mobile data and I pay $25 a month. It's actually cheaper than my old plan where I paid $30 and didn't have any data.

Anyway, the kids and Brandon eventually woke up. After we all ran down to the bathroom the kids came back and started working on a fire. Charlotte had lit the fire the night before so now it was Lydia's turn.  A while ago Brandon told the kids that when they could light a one match fire he would buy them a pocket knife.  Well, Lydia lit a one match fire this morning.  She was so proud of herself. She kept running around saying, "Now I get a pocket knife!"

I gathered up the dirty clothes from Friday and Saturday and put them into two sleeping bag bags. Then Charlotte and I drove over to the laundry room. We put the clothes into three washing machines (at $2.75 each) and then found an outlet to plug in my camera charger. We also stopped by the map and put a pin in it.  Last time we stayed here as guest we'd put our pin in for Ozark, Alabama.  This time we put it in for Twin Falls, Idaho.

 

I set a timer for the amount of time on the washing machines and we drove back to camp.  Brandon had breakfast ready for us. It was another simple meal. 

After a little while Charlotte and I went back to change the laundry from the washers to the dryers.  We added some additional stops to that. Our campsite neighbors had been asking about going on the Boat Tour down at Fishing Bridge.  I'd given them info on how to do that. But I wanted to see if I could find them the brochure with the prices. So I drove over to Canyon Village to the building where the Activities Desk used to be.  But it was LOCKED! The gift shop was next door so Charlotte and I went in there. I asked the workers where the Activity Desk was located these days.  They told me it was at the front desk of the hotel.  So then we drove down there and went to the front desk. 

The front desk worker was super nice.  She looked up the tour and said there were several tours with open spots that day.  She also gave me the brochure.  Charlotte and I went back to camp and gave the brochure to our neighbors.  They really appreciated that. Later they said they had gone on the boat ride and it had been really fun.  I'm glad I could help them out.  

When I got back Brandon told me, "We have a homicidal squirrel."  I didn't know what he was talking about at first, but then a pinecone flew out of the tree and nearly landed on my head!  Brandon told me, "That squirrel has been up there throwing pinecones at us for 10 minutes." It had hit Lydia's leg earlier.  It also got several direct hits on the car. The whole thing was super funny.  

I went back to the laundry room and collected the dry clothes.  I was happy that they really had dried.  I'd put the jeans into a small dryer that was $2.00 for 30 minutes and the rest of the clothes into a big dryer that had been $1.75 for 15 minutes and cost 25 cents for each additional 5 minutes. I'd been worried that after all that the clothes would still be damp. But they weren't.

Back at camp  I wanted to just throw everything in the tent and get going for the day, but Brandon was still organizing some of the food things. Since we were already getting a late start an extra few minutes wouldn't really help us anyway.  So I made sure to get all the clothes sorted out. I grouped the kids clothes into what they would wear on Monday and Tuesday and their pajamas for the next two nights as well. I sorted out Brandon's clothes and my clothes and put them in our back packs. 

Yes, it was a lot of work to make sure all the clothes were organized, but since the campground showers were closed I took comfort in knowing that at least our clothes were clean. 

By the time we were ready to leave it was a little past 10:00. I could picture all the crowded parking lots at the geyser basins and knew that it was pointless to try to head over there right now.  But I had a feeling we could still find some good spots at the Canyon Overlook parking lots since they were only 5 minutes away. 

So we drove over to the parking area for the Brink of the Upper Falls. This area had been redone in the last 4 yeas and there were more lookout spots. 

We could look down on the Upper Falls from above.

And then we could walk down the short trail to the lookout above the water. 

This is always such an impressive sight.  I remember being awestruck by this when I first saw it when I was 17. 

We had a quick stop at the restroom. (With flushing toilets) 

 . . . and then drove over to the road for the Southern Side of the Canyon. Brandon wanted to take us to the geothermic area that is near Canyon. He'd taken the kids here when I was at work one day. I'd always wanted to see it, but we'd run out of time.  We knew the back country was the perfect place to go while the popular parts of the park were crowded. 

There was only one tiny problem. Brandon wasn't entirely sure where the trailhead was. We'd forgot to bring our detailed guidebooks and maps on this trip because we hadn't planned to go anywhere we hadn't been. I'm a walking GPS when it comes to places I've already been, but since I'd never been on this trail I was no help at all. Brandon was fairly confident this was the right place, so we started walking on the trail. 

Along the way we had a pretty good view of Mount Washburn. I made sure to get a picture because somehow the whole time we lived in Canyon Village I never once took a picture of the mountain that we looked at EVERY DAY.  You can see the little square building on top of that mountain. I reminded the kids that they had hiked to that building. 

But past hiking experience on Mount Washburn wasn't much help to us on this trail.  Brandon remembered the trail being in the trees most of the time, but this trail was taking us through a field. And it was heading in a different direction than Brandon remembered too. 

I trusted Brandon and yet when he started to second guess himself I wasn't so sure.  We only had 5 days in the park. I didn't want to waste that time on wrong trails.  We decided to call an audible and turn around. 

We went back to the parking lot and studied the map better.  Part of the problem was that this whole side of the canyon had a lot of construction going on when we lived here.  Perhaps the trailhead that Brandon remembered was no longer accessible from this parking lot. 

We decided to go to the new (huge) parking lot that was for the Southern Side of the Canyon Rim Trail. There seemed to be a trail head from there that lead to the area where Brandon remembered the geothermal area to be. I'd take the kids to look at the view points while Brandon scouted the trail. 

So Brandon headed off on his solo adventure while I took the kids to the viewpoints.  Here's the Upper Falls.  This whole area had been under construction the whole summer when we lived here.  So we hadn't been over here at all. 

Then we went to a pavilion to wait for Brandon to come back. I gave Lydia the camera and let her play with that. 

Here's Derrick being silly. 

Charlotte chilling out. 

We got board of waiting so I called Brandon. We both had only a little bit of service, but the call did go through. He said he could smell sulfur so he knew he was close.  I told him we were going to hike on the canyon rim trail and that we'd meet up at the pavilion when we got back. 

So we started hiking on the trail.

Lydia still had the camera and so here are rare pictures of me. This is the trip I discovered that I love cross body bags so much more than backpacks. 

We made it to an overlook where we could see the Lower Falls.  

Derrick pointed to the overlook at the Brink of the Lower Falls and told me, "Mom I want to go THERE!"  I told him we'd do that hike, but it wouldn't be today. 

Lydia had fun taking lots of pictures. 

This is the trail to the stairs on the Uncle Tom's Trail. I love the Uncle Tom's trail because it ends really close to the waterfall, but for some reason it's been closed the last few years. 

Lydia took lots of pictures that I never would have thought to take. 

Here's me helping adjust Veronica's backpack. The kids all took turns wearing the two water backpacks. One was full of all of Brandon's extra gear and it was so heavy they could only wear it for a little while.

We could have kept hiking on the rim trail, but I have scary memories of that trail. It doesn't have a lot of guard rails and so hiking it with little kids it is nerve wracking. Even with slightly older kids I did not want to do that as a solo parent. So we turned around and went back to the pavilion. 

Brandon did make it to the geothermal features and he backtracked a couple trails and realized that we had been on the right trail from the beginning. He felt vindicated. 

Here are a couple of pictures from his little solo adventure.

I think he's pointing to something in this picture. 

Look at that cool hot spring pool. Hardly anyone knows that this is in the Canyon Area. 

There were even some mud pots. 

By the time Brandon got back it was around 1:00 in the afternoon.  The kids (and me) were not interested in going to see the geothermal area so we tried to come up with an idea for what to do next.  They geyser areas near Old Faithful were out of the question. And everything around Canyon was also off the table now.  We'd watched as the giant parking lot had filled to near capacity.  This was the largest parking lot in the area.  There was no point in trying to find a spot anywhere else.  

Brandon suggested another Back Country Hike.  This time to Upper Gibbon Falls. This was another hike he'd done with the kids while I was at work.  He really wanted to show it to me, but I wasn't sure the kids were interested in hiking.

We still weren't sure of our plan as we got in the car.  We were thinking of heading down to Old Faithful anyway and getting a spot in that giant parking lot.  It would be crowded, but you can usually find a spot there. Then we'd be able to spend the afternoon walking around the Upper Geyser Basin. 

We needed to back track past Canyon to head toward Old Faithful. As we drove past the road for the North Canyon Rim we saw a huge line of cars waiting to turn onto the road for the north rim. 

I told Brandon, "Hey, Upper Gibbon Falls sounds amazing right now." I didn't want to be dealing with jam packed roads all afternoon. 

So when we were on the road between Canyon and Norris we stopped at the parking lot for the trailhead for the Wolf Creek Trail. The parking lot is on one side of the road and the trailhead is on the other. We had to wait for a break in the traffic and run across. 

When we were on the other side I asked Brandon, "You did this with the kids?" And he told me, "Actually, when we did this it was a loop trail. We started at the Ice Lake Trailhead and then ended here.  We had to walk back along the highway for about half a mile."

Somehow that detail had escaped me for four years. 

Back country trails in Yellowstone are interesting.  They are all over the place, but aside from little signs announcing the trailheads there is very little information given about them from the road.  This is probably so ever other tourist doesn't try to wander down the trails. If you hike about 100 feet down the trails you will usually come to signs that show the route. But they don't give details about what you'll see along the way.  Again, this is probably to keep unprepared tourists off the trails. 

We stopped at the sign and Brandon showed the kids the route they had walked 4 years ago.  This was the infamous hike that had involved crossing a raging stream on a log.  Brandon had taken a rope from his bag, and tied it to a tree on one side of the stream. Then he'd walked the log and tied the rope on the other side.  Then he helped each child cross the log while holding onto the rope. Lydia had been in tears when they reached the other side.  Brandon had tried to comfort her by telling her that they never had to cross the log like that again. Lydia had cried out, "But I WANT to do it again."  The kids all remember that hike and were excited to be doing it again. But they were all a little disappointed that there probably wouldn't be any log crossing on this trip. 

A lot of the trail took us through a meadow.  Brandon said this had all been marshy when they did the trail 4 years ago. Now it was all dry. 

We stopped for a break in some shade. Derrick immediately started cracking and hitting all the dead logs and sticks.  Brandon said, "This is what he did on EVERY hike."

Veronica was playing around too.  Brandon said that when she was 3 she would stop at every snow pile and say, "Snow!" and have to play in it.  Then she'd walk to the next snow pile and do the same thing.  

We hiked for maybe a mile and then we could hear Upper Gibbon Falls. We were on a ridge and could look down on it. 

The trail took us down to the brink of the falls. We stayed here for a long time. 

The kids had fun crossing the Gibbon River. 

And playing in it. 

Here's Derrick having the time of his life with sticks AND water. 

Veronica had fun in the dirt. 

I found some shade and took a break.

Brandon took the camera over the river and took this picture. 

Here are the kids playing on a log. 

Another angle. (Don't worry, that log is not as close to the brink as it looks.)

We had such a great time here.  On the hike we hadn't seen anyone else.  While we were at the waterfall we saw maybe three other groups of hikers. 

I promise, it's not as close to the brink as it looks. 

Here's Charlotte. 

She and Brandon went on a little hike. 

We had a great time at Upper Gibbon Falls. We could have continued hiking and gone to Ice Lake and then come out on the road there.  But that was a tad farther than we wanted to go on this trip.  We needed to save our hiking energy and enthusiasm for later. So we just went back the way we came. 

Back at the road we crossed the highway again.  Then we were back to the car.  The kids were so excited to sit down and take off their shoes.  They were all wearing their old tennis shoes and complaining that they were too small. But I hadn't wanted them to get their new school shoes dirty on this trip. (Plus I checked at their toes did have a little bit of room.)

We were in no real hurry to get to Old Faithful because it was only about 3:00 in the afternoon. There were still tourists everywhere. This is what the road outside Norris looked like.  Oh I feel bad for anyone who had to park on the road and walk into Norris.  Norris is bad enough when you have to walk from the parking lot.  I can't imagine it being worth it at all if you have to walk in from the main road. 

We were content to do sightseeing from the road.  This is Beryl Spring. Charlotte used to say this was her favorite because it has such a short trail. 

Here's me trying to take a selfie. 

We passed Madison Junction and soon came to the turn off for Firehole Canyon Drive.  This is a one way road that goes along the old stage coach route. It's also a fantastic drive if you aren't in a hurry to be anywhere. So we went on the drive. I forgot how sheer the cliffs are on the other side of the river. 

Here's Firehole Falls. 

We drove by the swimming section of the river.  This was shut down last year due to COVID and has yet to reopen.  Part of me thinks that the National Park Service was just looking for a reason to shut down swimming here.  Traffic was always a nightmare.  I wouldn't be surprised if they keep this closed to swimming for a long time. 

We rejoined the main road, but soon left it again when we came to the Fountain Flats Drive.  This is a dead end road that leads to the Fountain Freight Road.  One of our best/worst hiking experiences started from this road.  Brandon and I joked with the kids that we were going to do it again. They were not amused. 

Then we got back on the main highway again. We were coming up on the first geyser area. It was the Fountain Paint Pots area.  We could see a geyser erupting. It was either Fountain Geyser, Morning Geyser, Twig Geyser, Jet Geyser, Spasm Geyser, Clepsydra Geyser (They are all kind of located around the same area so it's hard to tell.)

We could have got out at the Fountain Paint Pots, but the parking lot was super full and so was the board walk. So we kept driving. 

Instead we turned onto Fountain Flats Drive to check in on Great Fountain Geyser. This geyser erupts every 9 to 15 hours. We'd watched it erupt during our summer in the park and it was one of the best geysers. I was hoping we'd get lucky again.  During the summer the park rangers track the geyser and post the interval of time that it might next erupt. But they don't do that in the off season. When we arrived all the sign said was "Mar Erupt Between Sept 5 and Sept 5."  That wasn't much help. 

We went and sat by the geyser pool anyway for a little bit.  Brandon was hopeful and wanted to wait.  I reminded him that one of my main Yellowstone Rules is that I don't wait for Geysers.  Other tourists were showing up and saying things like, "Oh wow, it's supposed to erupt today." and I was growling under my breath, "Yes, that's because it erupts EVERY DAY."  So we didn't stay long. 

We did see White Cone Geyser Erupt down the road while we were sitting by Great Fountain Geyser. So our little side quest hadn't been completely pointless. 

We went back on the main road and were still making our way to Old Faithful.  We knew we were getting close to Midway Geyser Basin when we started seeing cars parked on the side of the road. Midway Geyser Basin is the home to Grand Prismatic Spring. And it turns into the biggest traffic nightmare every day.  People are will park along both sides of the road for at least a mile. 

We had not plans to stop here so we were just trying to get through as fast as possible.  But traffic was so bad we found ourselves stopped on the road a couple times. During one of those stops we noticed a car that was trying to back out of its parking spot but seemed to be stuck. We could see the wheels on the car spinning, but it wasn't moving.  Brandon said, "here, you take over driving, I'm going to help them back out."  

He put our car in park and hopped out while I ran over from the passenger side.  I told Brandon, "I'll find a place to park up ahead." I started driving when the line of cars in front of me started moving.  I was able to find a little spot about 100 feet down the road.  It wasn't a great spot and I was worried about getting out own car stuck, but it would do for a quick parking job. 

Brandon ran over to the stuck car and started figuring out what to do.  The car was driven by some Indian tourists.  It was a rental car.  Brandon could tell that the emergency break was still on.  No one knew how to get it off.  They finally figured it out and then Brandon helped push the car over the little hill of dirt that they'd been stuck on. They were on their way pretty quickly. 

I'd sent Charlotte and Lydia over to tell Brandon where we were. As soon as the car was on it's way Charlotte and Lydia popped out of the woods where they'd been watching Brandon from the trail.  They all walked back to the car. 

What an adventure!

After we finally made it through the Midway Geyser traffic jam we passed the Fairy Falls Trailhead, the Biscuit Basin, and Black Sands Basin.  All of a sudden we came to the exit for Old Faithful and soon we were on the road heading into Old Faithful. 

There is a cross walk on this road that appears to go nowhere.  It actually leads to the employee living area.  When I visited Yellowstone with the kids in 2015 we'd had to stop for an employee as they crossed at this crosswalk. This is the place I realized that employees LIVED in the park. That information percolated into my brain and less than 2 years later I was living in the park. So naturally we had to take a picture of this life changing crosswalk. 

We arrived at the Old Faithful parking lot and ended up in a huge jam of cars.  I told Brandon, "I bet Old Faithful just finished erupting, and all these cars are trying to leave."  A family walked by our car and I asked, "How long ago did it erupt."  They said, "About 15 minutes ago."  So I was right.  That also meant we had about an hour and 15 minutes until the next eruption. 

Traffic was really backed up and Brandon was just tempted to park in the back and we'd walk the rest of the way.  But I had a little memory tickling in the back of my mind.  I told Brandon, "just wait. I think if we stay in this far lane and circle around we'll be able to get a spot close to the Lodge.  And sure enough as we moved along I could see that there were a lot of spots at the lodge.  We ended up parking right next to the lodge. 

This was great because we all really needed to use the bathroom. So we zipped into the building and used the restrooms there. Then we went back to the car and grabbed things for a late snack lunch/early snack dinner. 

There aren't a lot of picnic tables at Old Faithful and the ones that were there were in use.  So we found some logs and ate on those.

We could see a geyser going off across the river.  When I zoomed in on it, it looked like one of the Lion Group. 

After eating we walked over to the Old Faithful Inn to look around in there.  (And use the bathrooms there because  . . . kids.)  The kids had no memory of being inside this building.  They were so impressed by the fireplace and all the rustic charm. 

All the kids wanted to go all the way up to the Crows Nest.  But we could only go up to the third level.

Here's the sign that said we couldn't go any farther. 

After we were done with the Inn we started walking around the back side of Old Faithful. I'm not sure I'd ever actually walked on this particular part of boardwalk. It goes from the Inn to the bridge over the firehole river. Lydia had the camera and was taking pictures of things we passed.  She liked to zoom in on the different features.

Here's run off going into the river. 

A pretty spring. 

We were directly behind Old Faithful and it was about time for the geyser to go off.  I'd been planning to cross the river and watch the eruption from the other side, but we decided this was an even better place to watch. So we sat on the edge of the boardwalk.  

Pretty soon the geyser began to erupt. I've watched Old Faithful erupt from various spots in the area, but this might be one of my favorites.  I loved that we basically had a front row seat.  There were several other people around us, but it was nothing like the crowd that was on the other side.

Lydia took these pictures while I was filming the eruption with my camera.

When it was over we watched the run off as it flowed toward the river. 

Then we finished our walk to the bridge over the Firehole River. 

I like Old Faithful. But what I really like about the Old Faithful is how many other geothermal features there are in such a small area. I love walking around on these boardwalks. 

I already have tons and tons of pictures of the features over here, so I didn't worry too much about getting pictures.  Charlotte and Lydia took turns with the camera and had fun being photographers. 

Here's Beehive Geyser.  We've seen this one erupt before. 

Here's the Inn.

And a zoomed in picture of Castle Geyser. 

Here's Lion that erupted while we were eating. 

The pictures look nice, but kids were actually really ticked off that I was making them hike. They kept saying they were too tired. But I didn't care.  We only had this one evening to enjoy the upper geyser basin and we were going to see as much of it as possible.  

We passed so many beautiful features.

I was hoping that if we kept hiking we'd get lucky and see one of the regular (or even one of the irregular geysers) go off while we were there.  We did see Riverside Geyser go off in the distance. 

But the kids were not as hopefull.  This felt like one long hike to them. 

Here's giant geyser. It's not regular at all.

We took this lovely shadow picture with it.  The nice thing about shadows is you can't see which kids are scowling. 

Up to this point I was feeling a little like this whole long walk wasn't going to yield a big payoff.  Yes it had been pretty, and we'd seen some cool things, but we'd walked nearly 2 miles and hadn't really seen a "show."  So when I turned on the path and noticed water shooting out of Grotto Geyser I got really excited. 

I hurried down the boardwalk to get a closer look.  

Sure enough Grotto Geyser was shooting off lots of water. 

It was so cool.  I moved around to the "front" of the geyser and took this video.

My plan had been to walk all the way to Morning Glory Pool, but the kids were making it pretty clear that this was as far as they would go.  And I was fine with that.  We'd seen on of the other geysers erupt so I was happy. 

We were able to take the bike road back toward Old Faithful and this route was more direct so the kids were happier on the way back than they had been on the boardwalk. Veronica had the camera at this point and took lots of pictures. 

This was such a beautiful evening. 

Here's the sun getting ready to set. 

Run off going to the river. 

The main camera's batteries died and the spare was out of juice too.  So I started taking pictures with my phone camera.  I got this one of Charlotte and Lydia walking together. 

Here's Castle Geyser.

As we were walking we saw Old Faithful erupt again. I've seen Old Faithful erupt from this angle before, but this time it seemed like the geyser went higher than I've ever seen it. 

We made it back to our awesome parking spot. The kids were all complaining about sore feet and being super tired.  Derrick was near tears.  Brandon had a whole package of oreo's stashed away.  He handed those out and that helped the kids perk up a little bit. 

We were all hungry and oreos wouldn't make a good dinner.  It was about 8:00 by this point.  We were at least an hour away from Canyon Village.  I was pretty certain the kids would be asleep by the time we made it back to the campsite. 

But Brandon and I were prepared for just such a situation.  Brandon brought all our food and our camp stove with us on the off chance we couldn't make it back to our campsite for dinner.  I looked on the map for the closest picnic site. It was Whiskey Flats back by the Midway Geyser Basin. So we got in the car and started backtracking. 

Along the way we passed a Bison just walking down the road. 

We made it to Whiskey Flats just as the sun was going down. Brandon and I hurried to set up our stuff on a picnic table.  Brandon started using the stove to heat up water to boil pasta. This is where that odd level of familiarity with Yellowstone came into play again.  I'm not sure most tourists would feel comfortable with just pulling over and making dinner on a picnic bench.  But Yellowstone is so familiar to us that this wasn't really that strange at all. 

The kids were in the car trying to make themselves comfortable with the travel blankets and pillows.  

Derrick got out of the car and started wandering around. Those oreos must have worked some magic because he was super chipper.  He wasn't phased at all by the darkening sky or the fact that we were eating dinner at a random picnic site He found logs and drug them over to the picnic bench and put them next to the camp table. When I asked him what he was doing he said, "I'm making a square." And he did. 

Brandon heated up sauce and canned chicken to go with the pasta.  The kids all got out of the car and we all ate dinner. We had a good time laughing and joking while we ate. 

We cleaned up and got back into the car.  As we drove it became more and more apparent that we'd made the right call by having dinner at the picnic site rather than wait until we got back to camp.  That's because we got stuck in the LONGEST, SLOWEST line of cars I've ever been in inside Yellowstone. 

We crawled along for at least 30 minutes between the turn out right after the end of Firehole Canyon Drive and Madison Junction.  

All the cars were in line to leave the park.  I'd never seen such a bad traffic jam.  It made me so glad we were staying in the park.  All the cars in front of us would have to stay in that bumper to bumper traffic from Madison all the way out to West.  That was at least 14 miles. And then they'd probably still be in traffic if they were travelling to Island Park. We heard later that there was a car accident somewhere on the way to West and that was why the line was so long. 

I took a video of all the cars that we passed after we made it through Madison Junction. The video lasts about 3 minutes and the cars are backed up to Tuff Cliff. I really want to show you the video, but it's taking FOREVER to upload and I really want to just publish this post so sorry, you just get a picture.  

Lydia, Derrick, and Veronica had fallen asleep while we were stuck in traffic.  Charlotte stayed awake until after we passed the cars going the opposite way.  But even she fell asleep before we made it back to Canyon. 

When we got back to camp we went to the bathroom and woke up all the kids and had them use the bathroom.  Then we went to our campsite.  Derrick was the only kid who said he wanted to wear pajamas so I helped him change.  All the other kids went to sleep in their regular clothes. They were barely awake as we slid them into their sleeping bags.  

Brandon and I got ready for bed and were in bed pretty quick. 

What a day it had been.  And we still had so much left to see.  We were already making plans to be up and back on the road by 8:00 the next morning.