Charlie's conference started around noon. I planned to take the kids to a park while the conference was gong on, but it was still pretty bad weather. I didn't want to keep coming back and forth to the room (leaving for lunch, then coming back, leaving to pack, then waiting for the conference to be over, etc), plus I was sick of being stuck in hotel rooms, and Brett had figured out how to open the locks and deadbolts and run like crazy in the hallways, so I just decided to pack up and try to kill time. Had I known what the kids had in store for me, I would have just stayed in the room. No one had slept very well the whole trip, and that night wasn't any different.
Brett had found a nice little bed on the luggage rack.
While Charlie was at his conference, I started packing up the room. I would have just left the kids in the room while I took all the luggage to the car, but since Brett could easily escape, I decided to take them with me. It was quite the adventure. The kids liked riding on the luggage rack, so they stayed on while the rack was moving, but once it stopped in the parking lot, Brett jumped off and started running away. I was finally able to get all the luggage in the car after a couple trips. I was already frazzled. I ended up buckling Brett in the car while I went back to the room one last time to get Amelia (She had fallen asleep, so I left her on the bed while I finished packing up). Then I headed out for some lunch. With as crazy as Brett was being, I didn't want to take him out of the car unnecessarily, so I got a bunch of stuff to go, and forgot to order some of the stuff since I was so frazzled, and then found a parking lot to park in and eat. It didn't kill as much time as I wanted. We headed back to the hotel to try and find out how long the conference would last. The problem was that the way the hotel was set up, you couldn't get up to the right floor without taking a bunch of wheelchair lifts that I couldn't figure out how to operate. We ended up wandering the halls for a while.Sam was pushing Brett in the stroller. There was one part that had about 5 steps with decorative ramps on each side. Sam had just been pushing Brett around this big room. All of a sudden, I look up, and Sam took Brett to the edge of the ramp and just let go! Brett went zooming down the ramp! He thought it was pretty fun, but I thought he was going to flip the stroller over. One guy happened to be watching. He burst out laughing at the whole thing. I eventually just took everyone out to the car and strapped them in until Charlie got done. It was not a fun morning.
After Charlie was done, we headed out to go home. Our plan was to drive through Yellowstone and out the East entrance back to Cody. We were met with a pretty amazing snowstorm.
Sam was really excited for it. He had been waiting for snow for a long time.
We stopped off to stretch our legs and have a quick snowball fight.
I don't know if we were just too engrossed in the scenery or what, but we missed the turnoff for the East entrance and didn't realize it for about 10 miles. We turned around and got back on track, only to be stopped by the park ranger closing the road literally right in front of us. We drove around trying to figure out a plan so that maybe we wouldn't have to sleep in the car that night. Everything closed for the winter October 3rd (which was that day), so we didn't have anywhere to find out other information. As the snow was coming down more steady, we decided to head to Cooke city, but we worried about the roads going through the high mountains. As we kept heading that way, the snow just came down harder and harder. We got to Canyon, which had a gas station still open. Charlie went in to see what he could find out. We switched our plans to head to west Yellowstone to stay the night. We got ahead of the storm and the snow turned to rain. Only then did we realize we had taken a wrong turn and we were actually headed to Cooke City. We decided to try for Cooke City instead, but then I had a big panic attack thinking about the roads we were going to be heading up (high elevation, narrow roads, no shoulders. We had gone that way earlier in our trip and I hated the whole part). We were going to turn back around and head the other direction to West Yellowstone, but we saw a car coming from the direction of Cooke city. They said the roads were clear, and their car didn't have any snow on it, so we decided to keep going to Cooke city. That's about the time we realized we had actually already gone over the terrifying roads and just didn't notice because we couldn't see through the snow. We made it to Cooke city and we were going to head on home, but then the snow really started coming down. Luckily, we were able to find a nice room and settled in for the night.
We got up pretty early to head out. We were trying to get home in time for Charlie to see some clients and so Sam could get to a little bit of school since he had missed so much for the trip already. Then we looked outside and realized it was still very cold and icy, so we decided to wait a couple hours until things thawed out a little bit.
We got everything packed up again and headed back out. This time, we made every turn we were supposed to and got home safe and sound. Although everyone was way tired and it was too late for Sam to head to school, so we just went home and passed out.
Overall, it was a fun trip. We just had quite a few hiccups throughout the last part. Who knows? Maybe if we hadn't stopped for a snowball fight then missed out turnoff, we would have made it through to the East Entrance, but then ended up stranded in the storm that was over that way. And I know had we known we were going over the crazy roads in the snow, I would have been having a major freak out moment, so it's good we didn't figure out our mistake until we'd already passed it. Everything turned out fine :)
