west yellowstone part 2

It rained all night which made our second day at Yellowstone a total different and equally amazing experience.  With all of the hot streams and geysers everywhere mixed with the fresh rainfall, the park was covered in the coolest steam.

 We saw even more buffalo and elk than the day before.

 And then we watched Old Faithful of Yellowstone go off.  Here it is before.

 And here it is in action.  I can't believe how high that thing shoots.

After we were done with our second day of exploring West Yellowstone, we drove to Bobby's parent's cabin in Bear Lake, but stopped at Bear World in Idaho on the way.  Bear World is a drive through wild life park that is stocked full of bears and a few wolves.  Before you enter the bear habitat you drive through a section of the park with a bunch of other animals like deer, elk, buffalo and moose.

Once you're in the bear habitat they tell you to not stop your car.  All of the bears and wolves are just roaming freely, with the exception of a couple of grizzly bears that are in an area behind an electric fence because they don't play nice with the others.  I cannot believe how many bears there were.  There had to have been at least 30 of them.

A lot of the pictures we took with our regular camera didn't turn out because we were driving, but I did manage to get a few on my phone that show a little better just how close these bears get to you.  In fact... this cute little bear got so close to our car that he rubbed his face up against my window.

And then he decided to take a bite of our bumper.  Seriously.  We felt him hit the back of our car and didn't really know what happened, but when we got out of the car we saw the perfect little bite mark.  You can see the two big holes from his k-9 teeth and little dents from his top row of teeth.  Thankfully the damage wasn't to bad and all he did was bite and release and not rip the whole thing off.  Of course we were a little mad, but we mostly just laughed it off.  I mean, how many people can say there car got eaten by a bear.

Bear World also has a cute little petting zoo.  They have baby bears and if you are there at the right time of day you can pay extra to hold them and feed them.  We weren't able to do that, but they were still fun to look at and all of the other animals were fun to touch.  Zion thought it was so cool!

It also had a few little carnival like rides that the kids thought were amazing.

After Bear World we went to the Bobby's parent's cabin in Bear Lake to finish off our fall break weekend.  I don't think it should really be called a cabin.  More like a lodge.  A huge lodge.  With 6 or 7 bedrooms and multiple giant family rooms and the most incredible view of the lake.  It was beautiful and such a fun relaxing way to finish our weekend.  Thanks Nate and Bobby for such a fun getaway!