Yellowstone

As my mom and I were driving up to Star Valley, she mentioned how close we were to Yellowstone, only 2 hours! She offered to let Todd and I take the kids in her Rialta (little motor home) up to Yellowstone while she caught a ride back to Grandma's house with Dan and Donna.
Todd liked the idea, which I wasn't sure he would, especially since he had just gotten off trail, and it didn't allow us time to wash their clothes or even shower (though we did find time to go down the creek on tubes...priorities, you know).
The drive was beautiful. The mountains made me really miss living in Utah. It was so good to be with Todd again, holding his hand, laughing with him, even if he was a little smelly. The Rialta was great, it fit all the kids and allowed them to see the scenery as well.
Just as it was getting to be dusk, and I was thinking that we should find a campsite, we came to the entrance of the Teton National Park. The ranger at the entrance informed us that the campsites in the Tetons were all filled and that parking on the side of the road was not an option. I figured that between the Teton and Yellowstone, there would be some campsites.
An hour later we were leaving Teton National Park, and entering Yellowstone National Park. Great. No campsites.
On a board at the entrance, there was a listing of one of the campsites in Yellowstone having vacancy. We went for it. The campsite was 20 miles away and full by the time we reached it. Now it was dark, Todd and I were tired, and not sure of where we were going to be spending the night. We didn't have a map or any information, so we decided to continue driving North, figuring that we would come to the end of the park soon.
We finally found a service station where we found out just how big Yellowstone is....we weren't even a quarter of the way through the park! We were informed that there weren't any vacancies anywhere around. We felt deflated and exhausted. Here we were in a motor home, yet were unable to just go to sleep in it.
We decided to drive the 2 hours south, from where we had come, to get out of the National Parks. It was a long ride, but we finally made it. Around 11:30 we pulled off the road onto a less traveled road and parked the motor home. We moved the sleeping children around in order to allow Todd and I room to lie down.

Can't beat the view from our "campsite"

I was so tired and excited to sleep, but immediately after lying down I realized just how smelly the boys all were. The sweat from the horses were seeped into their jeans. It smelled of a giant port-a-potty.
If the smell didn't deter my sleeping, it was further hurt by Iralee's squirming next to me all night, my big pregnant belly, and the fear of having someone come up to the motor home insisting we leave.
Not a good night's rest, but in the morning we were excited to venture on.
We drove through the same places we had the evening before, with the scenery being just as breath-taking.

We stopped at a couple of places to hike/walk around. Then we went over to Old Faithful. We went on a tour of the geysers there, which was educational.

At one point we lost Mikey for over an hour for he wasn't paying attention to where we were.
Iralee was difficult at times to keep safe and with us.

But all in all, we were so grateful that we made this unplanned adventure. We felt dirty and unkempt, but life felt simple and stress-free. It was great to spend time together as a family.