Our Yellowstone Trip: Days 7-9

After taking our last pictures in Yellowstone at Grand Prismatic, we hit the road east for a weekend of swimming and boating at Lake Mac, Ogallala NE before going home.

But first stop again in Casper WY KOA to stay Thursday night. This has been a convenient stop for us with very clean facilities, showers, laundry, and even a pool and park which the kids have loved. We counted and I think we’ve set up and taken down our camper a total of 11 times. 😂 

*The five kids loved playing board and card games throughout the trip. Favorites were Monopoly Deal, Dominion, the license plate game (between both families we identified ALL states!), and Would You Rather (kids edition). 

On our drive we spotted Chimney Rock as well. Kyle had seen it before but I don’t think I had.

We arrived at Vans Lakeview in Lake Mac, a place we’ve stayed before on the south shore, about 6pm on Friday. No sooner than arriving to our lots (78 &79) we realized we were greeted with a tornado warning. The storm came in real fast. We pulled out before setting up and drove back up to the general store for cover. The wind picked up and suddenly we were in a crazy sandstorm. We blindly ran as fast as we could toward the store covering our faces. I honestly thought the tornado was directly above us and while running and grabbing Norah’s hand behind me I had this weird fear we’d all get whisked away. We dashed through the front door where the Van’s staff greeted us with a calm monotone “Yeah…welcome to Lake Mac” as if this was the most normal thing to occur here. Okay, good to know. About five minutes later the storm had vanished and it was a gorgeous night. 

It was beautiful the rest of the weekend. Sun out, a little wind, warm waters. We spent about 8 hours on the beach Saturday. Kids had fun boating and tubing with Emily’s college friend’s kids who live nearby and stopped by with their boat. We all brought lunch food and snacks so we didn’t have to leave the beach. Everyone here just drives out onto the beach, parks and sets up in front of the water. I’ve always loved how big the beaches are here.

It was a perfect way to end our vacation. We had one last dinner together Saturday night back at our campsite, cooking up leftovers and clearing out our fridges and cupboards. Everyone hung out by the fire to reminisce on the best moments from our trip. 

Now it’s Sunday and we’re headed east on our last leg of the trip - HOMEward bound to our animals we miss and probably a very overgrown garden and lawn. It’ll be nice to be home, but we’ll never forget this trip. Only a few snags along the way: a leaky tire or two, torn windshield wipers we had to replace, hauling a camper in high altitude, testing the strength of our marriage a bit while communicating to line up our Tahoe to the camper perfectly (haha), but nothing we couldn’t manage together! We truly had a great time and are already talking about the next camping trip for our family….maybe Banff Canada 2025? 😉 ♥️

Side note: From the flat lands to the sand hills and mountains, we crossed a lot of different terrain during our travel west so I snapped several three second videos as it changed. Check it out. 

Days 7-8 Recap:

• Old Faithful
• Grand Prismatic (hike via Fairy Falls)
• Travel: Casper WY KOA
• Travel: Lake Mac, Ogallala NE
• Vans Lakeview Campground, Lake Mac
• HOME!

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