Thursday--Close Encounters

We found it beneficial to our senses to hit the hot springs first thing in the morning, so we did that again on Thursday. There were so many to see! As we were walking around this section (Black Sand Basin) we noticed that everyone was being quiet and moving slowly. We looked over and noticed a huge male buffalo right near the boardwalk. I am scared to death of those things due to my encounter in Montana in April, so I was wary to put it mildly. Really, though, if he decided to charge what would you do? Jump off the boardwalk to your death in the hot springs? We carefully made our way over to a section of the boardwalk that was more elevated, so I felt a little more safe. We then noticed that he was there with his whole family--there were probably ten more buffalo within 20 yards of us! We watched them silently for a while, but when they started bellowing, I decided it was time to depart.

Ryan had Isaac hold out his arm so that it looks like he is holding up the buffalo...sort of.

This is as close as I would let our family get. There were some people that were much, much closer.
We then headed over to hike to Fairy Falls. I thought the name alone would entice the girls to enjoy this hike. Unfortunately, the wildfires in 1988 really messed this one up, so we were exposed in the sun and barren wilderness for most of the hike. I also mis-read the description of the hike. I thought it was 2.6 miles round trip--but that was only one way. So I neglected to bring our lunch on the hike with us, thinking we would be back in plenty of time to eat somewhere else. Oh well, I did have snacks! It took quite a while, but the Falls themselves were beautiful and the girls started dancing around and acting like fairies as soon as we got there.

This picture doesn't do it justice--the waterfall started really high.
The kids in the burnt forest. The undergrowth was starting to change colors for the fall though, so it was really striking.
Almost back to the car...We let Lincoln hike part of the way back on this hike and he loved it. He probably went at least half a mile before we put him back in the pack and he could have kept on going! I'm always telling the kids "We are a hiking family" and I guess he listened! He then fell asleep in the backpack and somewhere along the trail his binky fell out of his mouth! As soon as we realized it was missing, Ryan went back looking for it, but it was no where to be seen. So we told Lincoln that a baby buffalo needed it more than him and had taken it. (Hey, it could happen.) That has been our method of weaning baby #4 off the binky! Every time we passed buffalo from then on, he would stick his hand out the window and say "Mimi?" (that is what he called his binky.) Every day he has asked for it less and less. I would just tell him the buffalo has it and he would say, "Oh." Now it has been a few days that he hasn't even asked! So thanks to our Fairy Falls hike, Lincoln no longer has a binky.