Hi everyone, thanks for all of your great emails and SORRY! that there has not been an update in a few days. I've been writing the blogs but have been unable to post for a couple of days so I'll be posting a few of them at one time.
On Thursday July 8 we woke up thrilled to be based out of our Yellowstone campground. It was 77 degrees with not a cloud in the sky and we had big plans today. We headed about 80 miles west into Idaho (the Idaho/Montana border is about ten minutes from the campground). The drive could not possibly be prettier as you can see the snow-covered Tetons in the distance for most of the trip. Idaho is a beautiful state with amazing trout fishing and the towns along the rivers all cater to the fisherman that come from all over the world.
Our destination this morning was the highly-recommended Bear World just a bit south of Rexburg, ID. We knew that this was a 'driving' safari but that's about as much as we knew. In hindsight, if I knew then what I know now, we WOULD NOT have been in a soft-top Jeep Wrangler. Bear World is an extremely unique place with over 35 grizzly, black and brown bears all just loose in the park. There are also elk, wolves, moose and a variety of other animals but it is the bears that draw the most interest. You are given your pass as you drive under a little sign that says something about 'Bear World is not responsible for blah blah blah'. Who reads that junk anyway. So we start driving and within about a minute a huge grizzly bear walks right up to the Jeep to check us out. Then another, then another and the next thing we knew, we were stopped completely and there were bears all around us. In fact, one bear went up to the van in front of us and completely ripped off the rear wiper on the window (see pic). Since there was also a bear in front of the van they had no choice but to sit and see what happened next. Fortunately other than sniffing us out and admiring our Jeep (at least that's what it looked like to me!), they did not do any damage...but I wouldn't do it again in a convertible.
In addition to driving your own vehicle, Bear World offers the opportunity for a family to get in one of their trucks and drive through the park to feed the bears. So of course our fearless group signed up immediately and out we headed with cake and other sweets that the bears can't wait to have come their way. All of us...even Cooper...fed grizzlies for the better part of an hour and it was something we'll never forget. Afterward we played in the nearby petting zoo, and thoroughly enjoyed being out in the wild.
We made it back to our campground late in the afternoon and Michelle and the kids headed off to the pool while I headed out to another biking trail. Although I'm not sure how this happened but I only ended up biking for about 20 minutes and then ended up at a biker bar (biker bars do not discriminate about what type of bike you have) in the tiny little village of West Yellowstone. I had so much fun that Michelle and I put the kids to bed around 9p.m. and then headed back to have an abbreviated 'date night' drinking beers, eating nachos and playing keno (we just learned). Brock later said to me, "Why do you have to have a date night, you and Mom are already related?" I replied, "Get lost kid."
Tomorrow our plans are 'loose' other than we are heading south. Not really sure where we are going, when we'll get there or what we will do along the way but I'm sure it will be something interesting!
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