Our family made a second trip to Yellowstone a couple weeks ago. This time, instead of three kids, we had five in tow. We went in the spring with the hopes of seeing some wildlife, and we had some great success! We have some dear friends who reserved us a campsite at Mammoth campgrounds and helped us capture some great finds in the animal department. One of which was a nest of baby great-horned owls near our campsite. Our friends had a nice camera, with a large lens, so he took some pictures and sent them to us. He captured the picture of this baby owl, which is about 3 months old. There were two babies in a very large nest. It was fun to see them. This was the on the top of my bucket list of things to see while at Yellowstone. Peter also loves owls, so it was fun for the two of us.
Come to find out, Mammoth is also the Elk Maternity Ward for Yellowstone. There were at least a dozen elk lounging around Mammoth, waiting for their babies to come. while we were there, a couple baby elk were born, but we missed seeing them. Apparently, one of the baby elk got eaten by a grizzly bear right near our camp site. We were eating pancakes at the time, so we missed that too. I'm not sure if I'm sad or happy about missing that one though. At the end of our stay, there were a couple elk that meandered right through our camp ground, and we got some great pictures of them next to our trailer. We saw bison and baby bison, several pronghorn, we had a close encounter with a deer on a hike, and another close look at a mama black bear with her three little cubs right off the road! It was very thrilling and memorable. The kids learned a lot just by watching. Just as we were leaving, Elsie got really close to a Golden Mantel Squirrel and took a picture. She was soooo excited about her "good find", and her ability to sneak up and take a good shot with her camera. Definitely, the animals were the most memorable on this trip.
Of course we also made sure we showed the kids Old Faithful and we saw some hot pots and such. That was fun as well, but it rained the majority of the time we were there. 
Another memorable experience Mike and I had was meeting all sorts of people who thought we were such oddities because of our large family. The first day our camp host said there was a guy from National Geographic taking pictures of people from various cultures touring Yellowstone. Our host said he was going to recommend our family. We never met the photographer, but I was surprised our number of children outweighed our very Caucasian backgrounds. We got lots of looks, comments, and waves from lots of people. I felt like I was one of the animals at times. At one point, Mike had Anna on his back, Adam on the front, and was hiking with the two older ones while I carried Kimball a few feet behind. A lady saw Mike and asked if he wouldn't mind turning to the side so she could take a picture of him! As I watched the humerous event a few feet away, I was laughing and feeling appalled all at once. Mike tells me he's famous now. We also drove into Gardner one evening and treated ourselves to Pizza. We made such a spectacle of ourselves! Adam was knocking down everyone's waters, and we kept cleaning up spill after spill. We were scrunched into this tiny booth (because that's all there was) with kids climbing on boosters and high chairs. There was no room to set pizzas, so we just emptied the pizzas from the trays as they brought them. While we were about 3/4 of the way through our meal, Mike told me to look around the room and see if I noticed anything. I realized our rambunctious family was on one side of the restaurant, and everyone else had been seated on the other side of the restaurant. I was pretty embarrassed and realized we needed to hurry up and eat so the poor restaurant could have their half of the building back! It was a lot of work with young kids, and we made quite a spectacle of ourselves, but it was well worth the experiences and memories we made.
We owe a big thank you to our friends who gave us their old family trailer. We know when it was given, it was full of their own family memories, and it was more than just a trailer to them. We are adding our own memories with it, and we are very grateful!
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