Heart Mountain Japanese Internment Camp

There is a Japanese Internment Camp near Cody, WY, so one day we decided to go there and learn more about it.  It's pretty sad what all they went through.

 This is a replica of what one of their houses may have looked like.  One room for the whole family.

 This is what was left of the hospital at the camp.

 This is Heart Mountain, where they got the name of the camp.

 Some of the housing from the camp still survived.

It was interesting learning more about the history of our country, especially a part of history that you don't hear much about.

Spirit Mountain Cave

One day we decided to explore a cave that was in one of the mountains in Cody.  We were told that is was the cave that the "Tennis Shoes Among the Nephites" author had in mind when he wrote the series.  We drove up a narrow dirt road and saw some beautiful views to get to the cave.

 The entrance to the cave

 We had to climb through this little hole to get in the cave.

 There was a big drop that Jake and others decided to go explore.

 Mosiah even had a fun time in the cave.

 Tean loved exploring with his flashlight.

 Jake encouraged Getu to go to this high up place.  I thought they were crazy.

 After being in the cave, everyone had a fun time sitting around with each other.

Thermopolis, WY

One day we decided to take a day trip to Thermopolis, WY.  We had heard that there was a really cool dinosaur museum, so since Tean loves dinosaurs, we went over there and took some of Julie's kids.

 Tean loved seeing all of the dinosaur fossils.

 He wasn't too thrilled about getting his picture taken all the time.

 They had a cool supersaurus.

 Jake decided to try and get eaten by a dinosaur.

 Ziah even had a fun time.

 Ziah loved riding on this mini triceratops.

 While at the dinosaur museum, there was a toy truck there.  Tean, Evie and Noah played for about 30 minutes acting like they were paleontologists and going out to find dinosaur bones and bringing them back.  It was pretty fun to watch.  We were told that the dinosaur museum was the best in the nation, but I wasn't too impressed.  It had a lot of dinosaur bones, but it was really small.

After the museum we decided to go see some petroglyphs while everyone else was on their way to Thermopolis.  There was a lot of construction so we decided to find a different way over there than what the forest service worker told us.  We decided to follow our GPS, and this is where it took us:

 There was water on the other side.  On the other side of the water we could see a road and a gate, but there wasn't a way over to it, so we headed back and went swimming at some hot pools in Thermopolis.

 There was a kiddie water slide that Tean was scared to go down.  Finally he went down with Jake and with his Uncle Joe.

 Ziah even joined in the fun and went down the slide with his daddy.

 He barely even got wet.

 We finally got Tean to go down alone as long as Jake was at the bottom to catch him.

We had a great time at the hot pools.  Tean loved swimming and playing around with his cousins.  After we went out to eat and then headed back to Cody.

Buffalo Bill Museum

The second day of our trip we went to the Buffalo Bill Museum that was in Cody.  It was a really big museum.  Tean loved playing in the picture of Buffalo Bill.  It was smoke that was blowing out and then the picture was projected onto the smoke.  Tean acted like he was "fighting" Buffalo Bill.

 Soon after we got there they started a free tour of the museum, so we jumped in on it.  They had some pretty cool animals.  Tean did not want his picture taken.

 Ziah was a good sport about being in the stroller and just chilled there.

 There was a huge replica of an Indian Teepee and their surroundings.

 Some cool Indian head dresses.  Jake decided he needed to try one on.

 There was a bird show where they showed different type of raptor birds that they had at the museum.  During the show, Tean and his cousin decided that Ziah needed some grass on his head.  Luckily Ziah thought it was funny and liked it for a while.

 For lunch we headed to a park across the street and ate our lunch.  After all the kids ate they started doing different kinds of races.  The older kids helped the younger kids compete against each other.  They tried wheel barrow races, but they had a difficult time staying up and going very far.

 They had fun dragging the littler kids across the lawn.

 After lunch we headed back to the museum.  They had one part of the museum dedicated to guns.  On the first floor they had 1200 guns on display and then if you hadn't had your fill after that, there were 1500 more on display in the basement.  There was a place where you could pay to shoot guns at a target.  Tean had fun just pretending to shoot the guns.

 He concentrated very hard on trying to get the targets.

 Grandpa put some money in and let all the grand kids take a shot.

 Part of the museum was dedicated to Buffalo Bill.  Jake decided to pose while on the saddle.

 Tean's attempt at doing the same pose as his daddy.

 Tean had fun playing with the horns of different animals.

We had a great time at the museum and learned a lot about Buffalo Bill and the area surrounding Cody, Wyoming.  That evening we hung out and had a great time together at the house.

Yellowstone Day 1 of Cody WY trip

Since we had to drive through Yellowstone to get to Cody Wyoming, we stopped at some places in Yellowstone.  While driving through the park we saw some Elk grazing on the side of the road.

 We stopped at a really pretty waterfall.  I can't remember the name of the falls, but it was pretty.

 Of course we had to see a buffalo while driving through Yellowstone.

 We stopped at Old Faithful.  While we were waiting for the geyser to erupt, we decided to walk around and see the cool things on the path.  This was a really pretty hot pool that we saw.

 Getu decided to hitch a ride on Jake and Jake's dad's shoulders.

 After waiting and waiting, Old Faithful finally erupted.

 It was cool to watch.

 Tean was excited to see a geyser and was talking about it the whole time until we saw Old Faithful erupt.

It was neat to drive through Yellowstone and see the beautiful country that is there.  It was nice to get to the house where we were staying with everyone and get settled in so we could have a fun filled week.