Smell the Roses: Our Zoo visit…

 This Sunday we went to the Denver Zoo. As usual, we had an awesome day! This time we didn’t brought our picnic food because it was a last minute thing, but still, it was awesome!

This time we got to see the Wildlife Show at the Conoco Wildlife Theater. In front of it there was the Tooth Fairy giving tooth brushes to everyone and reminding the kids to take care of them. Robert’s first time seeing her so he was all smiles! :)

This time my mom got to see the bears… specially after our Yellowstone trip! :) In the backside of the part there was a pretending elephant to take pictures with that look just as real! That part of the zoo we were told that was going to be closed. They are building a whole new area, huge one, with new animals! Is going to be called, Asian Tropics.

We had the traditional train trip and stopped at the flamingos. When we stopped for an ice cream, apparently an animal was escaped. We never knew what it was but there were keepers everywhere with nets, first aid kids, and a medium cage. My sister’s guess, a monkey or a bird.

We also saw the wolves this time! We’ve been there like 5 times and have never seen them. We visited Yellowstone and didn’t see them either! So this time we were lucky! :)

Every time we go, we traditionally (with no intention) take a picture of Robert at the Brass Bears. This time, Robert himself asked me to take a picture of him there! Here some Pictures from the past and present:

2005	2006
I awe you 2007’s one. I just noticed I don’t have the pics in my computer!!!!!! At least I have some albums in Facebook with 2007’s pictures! 2007 We didn’t went to the Zoo in 2008!	2009

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RV Trip to Yellowstone #3: Comments on the Trip

With this post I want to comment about our trip. Do’s and Don’ts … tips and tricks to make your RV vacation experience easier and I will relate everything to our Yellowstone trip.

We certainly had an AWESOME time. We were 9 people: 6 adults and 3 kids (10, 7, and 5). It was an 9 hour trip but with stops a bit longer.

Planning Food for Yellowstone RV trip

I have posted our “menu” or at least what we ate while we were in our trip. Here I have to say that it was a great idea to bring already cooked or easy to cook food. This way we spent more time enjoying our trips than spending it in the kitchenette or BBQ. For breakfasts choose easy to cook or non cooking stuff: cereals hot or cold, proteins like cheese, hams or eggs. For Lunches easy to carry in backpack stuff; you can make great sandwiches or do hot dogs with chili. They are hearty and you can wait to eat until dinner time. For dinner you can get more luxurious here, but make sure you bring everything ready to cook! Season everything in advance! I truly recommend put EVERYTHING in ziplocks and keep them in ice coolers. The RV fridge is not worth it! It will not keep your food safe (the cooling system is not enough to keep it from spoiling). So bring some coolers: one for drinks, one for food and another one for snacks or kids stuff. Bring extra ziplocks, they are handy for everything. For snacks, granola bars, trail mixes, crackers, cookies, COFFEE! To make the coffee we used what we call a “Greca” aluminum coffee maker. This way we didn’t use the generator for making coffee. Water, lots of water, you can bring your own water mega bottle and refill your water bottles as you go.

You can go for paper plates, it will save you a lot of water from the water tank when doing dishes, but bring reusable utensils, you can wash them really fast and use them over and over again. Paper Towel and cloth towels are a MUST! Specially when going with kids! Disinfecting wipes are also handy! They clean and disinfect when cooking!

Going to Yellowstone in an RV

Plan your RV trip and locating gas stations along your route. This way you can stop for gas and bathroom (to save some water from the water tank). Use the generator only when using the microwave, turn it off as soon as you are done! Also use it to have warm water for bathing. Turn one the water pump, when going to the bathroom, doing the dishes or getting a bath and turn it off as soon as you are off!

Bring a floor carpet and a towel for the bathroom. It will make cleaning time much easier! :) Hand soap and toilet paper for the bathroom. Extra batteries, the portable DVD player, and board games. Insect repellent and sun block (fragrance free please! it will keep bears away). Pots and pans (just what you need).

Campgrounds usually have times where you can have your generators ON. One day we arrive just in time to the campground and we some of us couldn’t get a bath because of it. So, we moved to a parking lot nearby and there we finished getting baths and headed back to the campground! Also we had a delicious meal and along with it DELICIOUS SMELLS! So we drove around to get the RV vented so the smells go away, just in case! We didn’t want any bear asking for recipes!

A great think of going in an RV is that you have your house with you (like a snail). If you can’t get to the campground to eat, you can stop literally everywhere to have a great meal with great views!

Yellowstone sightseeing

If you are willing to see wildlife, don’t just stop to see the BIG ANIMALS! There is a lot going on in the prairies and the trees that you are missing! Take a time to do your research and look for smaller things too! :)

Bring waterproof jackets or an umbrella… just in case! It rained when we went there! Flash lights, and a lighter for the stove.

Bring some binoculars and “scan” the big areas around! When we were looking at the pictures in the computer we noticed when photographing an elk, there was a bear in the background that we didn’t noticed at all! Take your time, plan your trip… make a list of things you want to see…

Wrap up!

We would do it again and again and again. It was around $250 per person or $660 per couple (we split it this way to not count for the kids). So it was an awesome deal! 5 days 3 night!

I think we didn’t forget anything. If something I would’ve brought more paper towel. :) Everything else was just perfect! :D

Please comment!!!

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RV Trip to Yellowstone #2: Places we visited and animals we saw

Yellowstone National Park is a wonderful place to visit. It is something to see it in pictures and another story seeing it personally. Is simply incredible! We loved it! The kids loved it! They learned a lot  and so did us.

The fist night we got there by 2AM. Is a 9hr trip from where we lived and we got the RV in the afternoon and then load it up really fast. In the way we had to make a stop because they were working on the road. It was around 11PM by then. During the trip we played board games, browsed some Yellowstone magazines and books and get to share with each other. Neither of us have been in an RV trip before so we were wondering about the water use (was there enough?), about the Grey and Black water dump (can the RV movie experience happen to us? lol). We had no idea how it will all turn out! But we enjoyed every minute of it.

When we got to the Camping site (we stayed at Grant Village), we parked and simply went to sleep. We have brought everything we thought we would need and to keep us warm. It wad pretty chilly outside so we decided to sleep all of us inside the RV.

The first day we had a Yummy breakfast and got ready to visit Old Faithfull geyser place. Like my husband said: “there is a smoking hole everywhere!”. It is true, they were everywhere! It was amazing! We also visited painted pots, the and Growling mountains.

The second day we went to explore nature. We visited the Cannon, the Upper Falls, tried to see wolves and bears (a bear we saw the last day inside the woods by the road to Tetons), we stopped by the Prismatic Pool (which we didn’t saw because it was rainy), and the Dragon’s cave.

The third day we headed home but in our way we traveled through the Tetons. Incredible views! NO WORDS!

We had fun, emptying the water tanks (my husband was initiated, but not as the RV movie, hahaha), having our s’mores and BBQ hamburgers. We had an awesome time!

Here some pictures of what we saw:

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RV Trip to Yellowstone #1: Food Planning

For our RV Trip to Yellowstone National Park we decided to keep it simple when it came to food. We had our luxuries but most of it was plain simple. We brought healthy snacks, planned nice breakfasts, light lunches (thinking on keeping it in the backpacks) and BBQ style dinners.

For Snacks we brought: 2 types of trail mixes, fruits, granola bars, cold cereals, cheese sticks, chips and dips.

For Drinks we brought: COFFEE, Milk, Juices, lots of Water, Soda and some beer! :)

For Breakfasts we had: Oatmeal, Egg and ham Sandwiches, Cold cereal, Pancakes and Fruits.

For Lunches we had: Hotdogs with chili, Club Sandwiches, and Quesadillas.

For Dinner we had: pre-prep Lasagna with salad (we ate the first day in our way to the park) and garlic bread, Boneless (or almost boneless) Pork Ribs in BBQ sauce with RiceARoni pasta and Mashed Potatoes (the ribs was enough for two times!), Hamburgers with salad, and Chicken Burritos.

I have to say that we pre-prep the most we could. For example the Chicken for the burritos and Quesadillas we prepared ahead and brought already cooked. They Lasagna was ready to eat, the chili too. This way we didn’t spend much time cooking and more time enjoying our trip.

I think we planned it pretty well. The RV was equipped with a gas stove and microwave. So it made it easier on us. We just had to warm our food most of the time. Other than that we BBQed and prepared some s’mores that the kids loved!

Here some pictures of our trip:

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