Thermopolis Part 2

This little town had quite the tourist attractions! First up for us was the buffalo reservation drive. We were going super slow so we thought it would be ok to let Bode come on up with us. He loved it! It’s like his life’s dream to ride in a car without being strapped in. It was so much fun to drive around and check out the buffalos. We were kind of far away from them and then we saw one standing right by the road. We took a small detour (pretty sure we drove where we weren’t supposed to) and ended up being RIGHT next to one. I mean I could have almost reached out and touched it at one point. Bode thought it was pretty dang cool.

Second up for that day was the water park. There are a few different ones in town and we opted for the “Star Plunge” which was meant for little kids. Clint remembered going to the same place as a kid with his ward on youth conference trips. I don’t have any pictures of the indoor area, but he remembered it being so much bigger. He also remembered that if you went under the water to this specific place that there was a spot where air came out and you could breathe in from it and stay under water forever. I thought it was so funny all this stuff came rushing back to him! It was pretty smelly (like sulfur) and the water was so warm. Almost too warm! It was record hot the week we were there and temperatures were already over 100 degrees, and add hot tub water to the mix and you get pretty hot pretty fast.

Bode is a not the adventurous  type, especially when it comes to water. He’s a wimp actually.. I might as well say it. He didn’t want to go in deep water, he didn’t want to get splashed, he didn’t want to go on the slides. He basically didn’t want to do anything. They didn’t really have any kid areas outside and it was way too blazing hot to go to the kiddie area inside. Clint was super bummed that he wasn’t having much fun – but I tried to tell him that is just how he is! When we go to 7 peaks etc., he’s perfectly happy to stay in super shallow water and kind of walk around and look at everything going on. I never push slides or anything else on him because 1. It’s easier on me if he doesn’t run off and do all that stuff and 2. I know it scares him. Clint is more determined to make him face his fears and try stuff out. He took him down on the slide a few times and he didn’t like it one bit. Each time Clint would go up to take him down again he’d whine about it. I told him that once he was up there just to push Bode down and make him do it alone. It was not a very big slide at all and the water was shallow at the bottom of it. I was there waiting for him to come down and he never came. I’m like what the heck is going on? So after waiting a while longer Clint, Bode and Owen all came down together. Clint said he tried to push him down but he put his arms and legs out and refused to be pushed. I can’t blame him I suppose. Water can be pretty scary when you don’t know how to swim! Swimming lessons was horrible

Owen had enough at this point and I went back to our room to put him down for a nap. Clint and Bode stayed a little while longer and walked back to the hotel, which was pretty close by. The kids were pretty tired from being in the sun so long and so after Owen woke up we went to some taco place for dinner and tried to put the kids to bed early so that Clint could go fishing until it got dark. Oh man it was not easy getting the kids to bed this night! They just weren’t having it so we ended up playing and watching a movie and finally got them to bed around 8:30-9. Clint was able to fish for like 20 minutes (after his 20 min drive there and back) but he did catch a nice fish.