Cody, Wyoming

We had made reservations for two nights in Yellowstone, but couldn't get in till July 25 and 26, so we decided to drive to Cody, Wyoming for a couple of days and check things out there.

 On the road again!

 We actually drove through part of Yellowstone on the way to Cody.

 Lots of gorgeous scenery

 And scenery changes

 We're not sure what this structure is!

We checked into a KOA park just outside Cody.  Talk about the deluxe kind of campground! The kids were in heaven!

The swimming pool was the star attraction!  The kids made lots of new friends as there were a ton of families staying there.  We had a hard time getting them out of the pool for dinner and bedtime!

Before the trip, I bought the kids some travel journals, some books I thought they'd enjoy, and a book of kids' ghost stories.  They started writing in their travel journals at the very beginning of vacation and I was happy that they were actually interested in writing every night. The journals had prompts such as "what I did today," "what I liked best about today," "today's weather," "something new I tried," "something neat I saw," etc.  They LOVED reading ghost stories each night in the RV.  Besides the book I bought, Rich had downloaded some onto his iPad so we took turns reading. It was such a fun time each night.  I was extra pleased when they both wanted to "read a little longer" in their own books when it was bedtime. Ally was reading a Clementine chapter book that was super cute and funny, and Aidan had a science fiction adventure about space pirates and bad guy spiders among other things.  Oh,  they also had activity books with an updated version of the old "license plate" game.  The book held stickers of each state's license plate and when we saw that plate, they'd put the sticker onto the appropriate state on the US map included.  I think I got more into it than they did at first, haha, but by the end it was a race to see who could find a new plate and add to the map!  We did pretty well and found most states around Yellowstone--thank goodness for tourist season, right?!