Squires Down Under - SLC-LAX

Another month, another travelog to post on the blog.

Day 1 - SLC-LAX - November 11, 2016

Sometimes we take a car service to the airport, sometimes we park at Diamond, but today we just parked in the long-term lot and rode the shuttle to the airport.

We found Wellington NZ on the world map on the floor of Terminal 1. One of our future stops.

Alison and her chili on a salad on a plane.

Kate and Linus and Sally in LAX.

We had booked our flights to LA separately from our flights to Sydney, so we booked them a day earlier to make sure that there weren't any glitches in making it to LA on time.

We rented a car and drove up to our hotel in Sherman Oaks.

Tomorrow: Universal Studios Hollywood and we fly to Sydney

Yellowstone - Day 3

We stayed a the same condo in West Yellowstone, before heading home through the park.

Our first stop was at Firehole Lake. As you can see it was a lovely day.

Our next stop was at the Grand Prismatic Spring. Lovely place, but sooo much steam.  It made it hard to really appreciate the color of the water.

We walked around the West Thumb Geyser Basin, which had pools of all sorts of colors and was right on the coast of Yellowstone Lake.

After we left Yellowstone, we drove through Grand Teton National Park. When visiting the National Parks I always wish that I had a fancy camera in order to take better pictures.  Cell phone pictures will have to do.

I get the feeling that they get a lot of visitors from Asia.

The Tetons.

We stopped by Jackson Hole for dinner.

We found a good Mexican Restaurant. We didn't leave Jackson Hole until after 7:30 PM, so it was a late night driving home.

We needed to be home for Sunday meetings, so it was a quick trip, but a successful one nonetheless!

Yellowstone - Day 2

Lots more driving today.  Yellowstone is a pretty cool place.

I went out and picked up breakfast from McDonald's.  The girls are always happy when they're eating pancakes.

After breakfast we made our way back into the park. Our first stop was a short hike around the Artists Paintpots.

Bubbling mud.

We then hiked around the Norris Geyser Basin.  This is where Steamboat Geyser is at, which is the world's tallest currently active geyser, but it hasn't erupted since 2014.  I bet it's pretty spectacular when it does go off.

Here's a video from the most recent eruption in 2014:

Kate & Lyla.

Yellowstone Falls.

Yellowstone Falls.

Next stop was a short hike around the mud volcano.

Old Faithful. With the local wildlife.

Horse & hippo.

Old Faithful winding down.

The highlight for the girls was playing the dirt by the Old Faithful boardwalk.

We walked around the boardwalk at the Upper Geyser Basin.  There was a coyote watching us closely.

Old Faithful from another angle.

We found a restaurant in town with sweet potato fries for dear Lyla.  This girl doesn't like normal fries, hamburgers, chicken nuggets, hot dogs, or anything that normal kids eat.

Yellowstone - Day 1

We can't sit around at home for long, so when the kids had school off for UEA we took a quick trip up to Yellowstone.

We left Thursday morning and drove up through Idaho Falls and went straight into the park through West Yellowstone.

Our first stop was at Gibbon Falls.  As you can see we arrived after a snowfall, it was pretty chilly.

I sure do love these smiles.

We continued our drive up to Mammoth Hot Springs.

We walked around the boardwalks and stopped by the visitor's center.

We still had daylight remaining so we made our way over to Tower Falls.

Today we saw buffalo, coyotes & elk.

We returned to West Yellowstone where we had a condo that we booked on Airbnb.  We grabbed a pizza for dinner and got to bed.