Since it rained and was foggy and dark I didn’t wake up super early and that worked out really good. I got the kids and I up at 8 and we ate and packed up the tent again. The tent was super wet and parts of our sleeping bags that were pushed against the sides were also but we ignored that and packed it all up anyway.
With our trip being so early in the summer I feel like we missed a lot of the crowds but we were also pretty limited on ranger programs open. However there was one pretty near our campsite like an hour after we packed up. Since we had a little time to kill we drove just a little ways away to some boulders.
We climbed around on them and checked out yesterday’s clouds going away.
It was pretty nice.
Then we drove down to sheep lake for the bighorn sheep program.
We were a little early and the kids got to checkout the stuff for the program.
Pumpkin was really excited for the program because she had a lot of faith the sheep would come down out of the mountains to the lake during the program.
She had almost everything done in her book and had seen almost every animal but the bighorn sheep. The program started and it was really good but we didn’t see any sheep.
I guess it is pretty common for them to come down during it though and they have a bunch of rangers there ready to shut down the road when they come. They never came but lots of Wyoming ground squirrels did.
We also saw lots more elk and the view was nice even with no sheep in it.
In the program another visitor mentioned seeing sheep down the road a bit at the alluvial fan area. We found it had a picnic area and decided to lunch there.
Right after we parked there was a commotion and we looked up and saw the sheep.
We watched them for a while. They were really far up so we used the super zoom camera lens and the binoculars to watch them. Then we went down, grabbed a picnic table and I cooked lunch while the kids worked more pages and documented seeing the sheep.
I made bean quesadillas with salsa for lunch and they were awesome. It was possibly the kids favorite meal.
After eating we packed up everything, didn’t bother with any dishes since it was the last meal and then checked on the sheep again.
It was a bit of a drive but I really wanted to go to bear lake as I was there this winter with the guys
and I wanted to see how it was now so we drove over and saw lots of elk on the way. Some far
some near
There were warnings that parking was full at that lake so we hit up some other lake on the way.
We had a nice little hike around it and even went past a wedding.
Then we drove to bear lake and got one of the last parking spots. It was still great.
Once again there was lots of snow along the trail and the kids loved making snowballs or just smashing it. We walked the loop around the trail and then everyone was ready to go.
So we started leaving the park. Right before exiting we hit the last ranger station and earned our last badges of the trip.
Then we started the drive home. We stopped for an early dinner at our favorite little Mexican place outside of Denver called Coronas but I was kind of disappointed in my chicken avocado burrito. The rest of the drive I listened to my book and the kids played ipad and then slept. I finished my audio book right as we entered Kansas City and we got home at 1:30am. The kids went right to bed and I showered and had a snack before bed.