We left Choteau this morning in a caravan with Brian & Phuong. They had enough time in their schedule to spend one night in Yellowstone with us before they had to head home.

Burning off some energy in a rest area. Brian needs it as badly as the kids do.

We arrived mid-afternoon and decided to at least try to see Old Faithful before Brian & Phuong had to leave. Old Faithful is 30 miles into the park.

On the way, you pass many other geysers. We stopped and spent quite a bit of time studying the Paint Pot mud hole, which is near a couple other geysers called The Fountain and The Mourning Geyser. A park ranger was speaking about them and said both are far more impressive than Old Faithful, but they only go off every 8 to 12 hours and aren’t terribly predictable. He thought The Fountain might spout within the hour, so we stood around mired in indecision for 10 or 15 minutes, and finally decided it was getting late and we should just head up the road to Old Faithful instead.

The mud pots. They stink.

The drive took a long time because bison like to stand in the middle of the road blocking traffic. This makes for awesome photo opportunities, but you better hope you don’t need to be anywhere on time.

Phuong trying to get some bison’s attention far off in the distance

We arrived at Old Faithful and discovered we’d missed it — by 10 minutes. The next eruption was predicted in about 90 minutes. Brian said to Adam, “Sorry guys. That’s just my rotten luck. I could fall into a barrel of boobs and come out sucking my thumb.”

Brian & Phuong decided to stay and wait for the next eruption because it was their only chance to see it. Adam and I headed back to the hotel with the kids because Adam was sick and needed to rest for awhile. Josie was profoundly disappointed and cried the whole 30 mile trip out of the park, “But I wanted to see it with Uncle Brian! He makes everything fun! Seeing it tomorrow with you will make it so lame!” Then she worked herself up to furious and turned on me. “Mama, why can’t you be fun like Uncle Brian? Why are you so awful and boring? I wish Uncle Brian was my mom!”

When Brian and Phuong got back from the park, the first thing Brian said was, “Oh, you guys left too soon! It was awesome! And we got charged by a buffalo in our car! You missed the best part of the whole day!”

Josie’s jaw dropped and she whipped around to glare at me, indignance rendering her speechless. Once she gathered her wits, she screamed, “I knew it! I just KNEW IT!” Luckily Brian had video on his phone of all those adventures.

We all ate dinner together at the restaurant in our hotel lobby. There we sat, discussing the excitement of the day, when Holden said, “Mama, my tooth really hurts.” That thing was so loose it was barely hanging on by a little flap of skin. I took Holden into the bathroom to inspect it, and it fell out when I touched it. He didn’t notice until the hole started spouting blood. I gave him a wad of paper towels to bite down on, but he had bloody slobber running down his chin and getting all over his clothes.

Once the bleeding had slowed considerably, we went back to the table. Brian took one look at Holden’s bloody shirt and the wad of paper towels he still had in his mouth and started to look pretty green around the gills. “I hate blood,” he said. I ended up taking Holden back to the room for a change of clothes just so he wouldn’t gross people out too badly.

Tomorrow Brian & Phuong head home to California, and the rest of us have the whole day in Yellowstone National Park. Maybe we’ll get lucky and see some bears!