It's that time of year again, the Wood Family Reunion! This August we headed out to eastern Idaho to spend some time in Yellowstone with the family. Thanks to a connection from one of Ryan's coworkers, we got a nice, big cabin for a great deal. The kids had a blast running around with their cousins and we adults had fun visiting and eating delicious food. With the river being right behind the house, I was nervous that I would have to spend the entire trip trying to keep my boys from drowning, but thankfully none of the children wanted to spend too much time down there. The wooden porch wrapped all the way around the cabin and most of their outdoor time was spent playing tag and chase around the deck.
Too bad Luke missed a great photo-op. He was too busy looking at his substitute moms of the reunion. Ripley and Brooklyn (the two little girls on the left) took it upon themselves to "take care" of Luke. One night I found the three of them walking laps around the porch, each girl holding one of Luke's hands. I asked them if they were doing okay to which they said "yeah, we're just babysitting Luke", and they kept walking by. What it must be like to have a sister in the family :)
We did spend some time in the river, wading, canoeing, and tubing. The tubing adventure is one that will live in infamy among Wood family lore for years to come. I know this story would be best told by Ryan, so get ready for a detailed, witty account of the adventure:
Since there were 6 adults and 7 kids that wanted to go tubing we decided that the best way to keep track of all the kids was to tie all the tubes together in a round flower-shape with a big tube in the middle and a bunch of smaller tubes around the outside. Then Glade, Cheryl, and Dad got in a canoe to paddle along beside us. This worked out great for the first hour of floating, since during that hour we floated about 300 yards downstream (it was painfully slow going). The slow section was livened up, however, by a fish swimming up the shorts of Angela and then a separate fish swimming up the shorts of Ryan 20 minutes later. Epic flailing took place on both occasions, to the general merriment of all bystanders.
But then the current started to pick up slightly as the water churned around a bunch of barely submerged boulders. Since the river was only 2-3 feet deep, we avoided most of the boulders by Ryan or Gavin getting off and dragging the tube-flower one way or the other to avoid them. But eventually there were too many boulders to avoid so we had to just ride over the top of some of them. We'd sound the general alarm for everyone to pick their legs up out of the water and the tubes would drag their way over the top of the submerged boulder and we'd be on our way. However, there were a couple of noteworthy exceptions to that rule.
One boulder caused the tubes to high-center and stall but the pressure of the river kept pushing the farthest back tubes forward and they started to bunch and tip up onto the tubes ahead of them. When Ryan jumped off to try to push the tubes off the rock he quickly discovered that the 2-3 foot deep river was more like 8 feet deep at that spot. The look of surprise on his face did not inspire the junior passengers with great confidence, to say the least, and that lack of confidence quickly transitioned to shrieking terror as the right side of Grant's tube began to very slowly rise into the air, slowly dunking a shrieking, terrified Grant backward into the cold river. Luckily this all happened right next to Ryan, who was able to quickly push Grant out of the water and back onto his now flipped tube. Shortly after this, the tubes rode over the offending rock and Ryan pulled himself back onto the tube-flower. At that point, Grant's eyes had taken on a certain haunted look which bespoke of certain impending doom in a watery grave.
Shortly thereafter, Gavin was able to push us over another rock only to then become high-centered on that rock himself as he discovered that it was "the size of a coffee table" and "about 2 inches under the surface of the water." A whole new bout of shrieking took place as the kids saw the last tube come out of Gavin's hand and he lay prone, as it were, on the surface of the river as we floated away. He quickly slid himself, seal-style over the surface of the submerged rock and swam-bumped along until he caught up to us.
At some point Erin also fell through the middle of the center tube and into the river while holding Tate and Brooklyn, all of whom had a good scream and scrambled back onto the tubes. At this point, every upcoming rock was met by a chorus of shrieks from the children, who were all genuinely terrified at this point, with Grant adding the most lively notes of all since he had endured the icey embrace of mother nature only moments before and knew, firsthand, the cruel fate that awaited anyone whose knuckles were not sufficiently white while holding onto the lifeline that was the tube-flower.
During the melee, the canoe also managed to get high centered on a rock and might have capsized if it weren't for the nautical know-how of her crew. Dad immediately got low in the craft and started to paddle like he meant business. Glade jumped into the river and tried to avoid Dad's paddle while he pulled the craft off the rock. There is no official report on what Cheryl did but I like to picture her vigorously pointing at stuff, shouting orders, and taking pictures to document the event.
Needless to say, the second half of the float trip was far superior to the first! Not only for the great stories that it provided but for the unbridled fear of the water that it bestowed upon many of the crew members. A fear that will both cause them to be safe on (or "from") future float trips and cause them to wake up screaming "DON'T HIT THE ROCKS!!!" for many nights to come.
Good times!
We had several fun outings during our stay. One was to a mountain man festival where the kids discovered the true comfort of a coon hat. The main highlight of that trip is when the mountain men shoot a cannon load of crappy candy to a bunch of excited kids. There's nothing like candy flying at your face at bullet speeds to get you excited!
We were hungry to see some wildlife out in Yellowstone country but only came across some elk and a ton of buffalo (which were every exciting, don't get me wrong). So we forked over some cash to visit Bear and Wolf world and watched some tired wolves laying under a tree in their enclosing. At least the bears were a little more active and ran around their preserve, showing off their muscles and shiny hair. I'm actually glad we didn't meet any bears out in the park, since I seem to have developed a unfounded fear of a bear-mauling that rivals my fear of spiders jumping on my face.
We all enjoyed the white elephant gift exchange this year. Ryan and I got rid of...I mean, passed on the yellow donkey to Glade and Misty and we came out of it with a nice Thrive cookbook (thanks Misty!)
Tate was very excited to receive his gift and grew quite attached very quickly.
The family shot (minus Wendy taking the picture), after we hiked to a nearby waterfall.
Ryan was a trooper and carried Luke around for most of the trip. I tried the pack on at one stop and walked about 15 feet before returning the pack to the van and letting Luke walk. That boy is probably close to 35 pounds so it is no easy feat to strap him to your back for a day (plus the weight of the pack and the water bottles inside. Phew!)
I imagine it's not really a trip to Yellowstone without seeing Old Faithful. It was actually quite amazing to behold.
As I mentioned, we came across tons of Buffalo. They are strange creatures aren't they.
Ryan joined some of the crazy tourists and took the kids out for some buffalo closeups. I preferred to stay in the van and remain un-gored. Fortunately, neither Ryan or the kids angered a buffalo, but we were pretty sure a crazy foreigner was about to get his. I had my camera ready to capture the goring moment as the man got closer and closer to a sitting buffalo. He stopped about 3 feet from the buffalo's head, turned his back and took a picture of him and the buffalo, while I watched the buffalo's eyes widen and get kind of crazy. Luckily for the tourist, the buffalo was lazy and let the guy go unmolested, but I was getting pretty concerned for a minute.
Luke grew weary of being trapped in a constricting backpack for most of the trip. Why can't we just let him fun free and wild next to that big waterfall!?!
This was what they call the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It is impossible to capture it's massiveness on camera.
On our trip back home from Yellowstone, we stopped at Glade and Misty's just in time for the Gooding parade and fair. The kids especially loved the small town parade with it's generous use of candy for the kids.
It didn't take long for Luke to realize that those people driving by were throwing candy for him to keep, and he got pretty quick at snatching up candy. We had to start regulating to make sure he let the little boy next to us get some candy too.
The boys enjoyed the fair rides with their cousins and had a great night full of family, candy, rides and fun. And you know that means they had a wonderfully easy time getting settled down and falling asleep that night. Um, JK.
We finally made it home and were ready to get back into a routine before school started a week later. It looks like Luke got back into his routine pretty easily :)
