Day 10: Ain't no Mountain High Enough

Ain't no Mountain High Enough.

Hike up Mt. Washburn

The biggest issue with travel for us is good coffee. We thought we got around this by getting a plug adaptor and bringing our thermal coffeemaker. No such luck. The coffeemaker takes more power than the adaptor has available, so bad to the dilemma. We have a camp percolator that we've never gotten decent coffee from it until today. It wasn't great, but it was good enough and a great way to start the day.

Coffee in hand, we went to Mt. Washburn to begin our hike. At one point, there was a road up Mt. Washburn, because of this it was a wide, cleared hike. There weren't many trees on the mountain, so almost every step was like the summit of most mountains we hike. The mountain was covered with wildflowers and volcanic rock. There was also snow on the mountain, which was fun for the kids. The top was beyond amazing but incredibly windy. There is a fire station on top of the mountain where there are bathrooms and a viewing area where you can get some respite from the wind. Hiking along with us was a family with three children about 5 years older than ours, a lovely retired woman working to make the hike (which she did!), and a large group of Japanese tourists. One of the most astonishing things to me is the number of foreign tourists at Yellowstone. I had always thought of Yellowstone as an American destination, but it's a destination for people worldwide, which is fantastic. People from around the world are getting the chance to see some of the best of our country.

After the hike we went into Canyon General Store, where they had a 50's style lunch counter. We stocked up on souvenirs and then headed over to the visitor's center to catch the junior ranger program. The visitor's center was fantastic, really wonderful exhibits and this fantastic fountain/ globe thing that you could manipulate. Kids added another National Park to their Junior Ranger status and we headed back to our campsite with a detour to the Virginia Cascades, which were beautiful.

Virginia Cascades

We had dinner and as became the kids ritual, they took a chilly dip in the water. While we were at the waters edge, a dad with his two girls told me about a place to swim that is safely fed by geysers (not scalding), and as my kids gleefully jumped into the frigid water, he noted that I might appreciate the warmer water more than the kids.


We went to another ranger talk, this time on bears and after the kids went to bed, Josh and I sat by the fire and enjoyed our last night in Yellowstone.