Island Park

After the fair we were off to Island Park. Honestly, I know everyone thinks Island Park and Yellowstone are a big deal but I will be honest—I think it is cool that they saved all that land for a park that will never be houses…and that is about all. I come from the most beautiful place on earth where the mountains are huge and the elk come right up to your horse when you are salting sheep in the evenings—so I am pretty hard to impress. But it was fun to go to Yellowstone and see the buffalo

and hang out with Nate’s whole family and play with Sage in the river. We took our Kayak and floated down not one, but two rivers. The first was right by our camp and it was a great short trip. The second was not great. At all. Ok the part where we saw the moose was cool but honestly, if I ever see that campground host again I am punching him in the nose. Let me explain. We asked our campground host if the river was deep enough to take a kayak and a canoe down. We asked if it was fast. We asked if it was safe to take the kids on tubes with us. He said it was over your head deep and pretty swift (but didn’t have big rapids) so we would want to make sure the kids were wearing life vests if they were on tubes but that people did it all the time. So we took four kids with us, and Nate, Sage, Michael, Christene, Lilly (their lab) and I took off for the “big river.” Yeah…about that. The big river was a joke. We had to carry the kayak in several places because it wasn’t deep enough to float us. The water was so slow that since the wind was blowing the tubers were literally getting pushed UPSTREAM by the wind. Literally. So Nate and I towed two tubers and Michael and Christene towed two other tubers. We had to paddle the whole way. Ugh. Oh well. The moose was cool and the scenery was nice and the sun felt good so I guess it was a pretty good day and a good trip.