Journey 44
Yellowstone, WY, July 2 - July 18,2012
A 12 year old young man, battling brain cancer, went on a tour/camping trip in Yellowstone National Park
Thanks to Jolynn at Competition RV for coming through so quickly on a RV rental for Joseph's Journey!
Here is the letter we received from our young man about his Journey.
Dear Joseph’s Journey and Papa Bear,
Thank you so much for sending me and my family to Yellowstone National
Park. I have wanted to go there my whole life and you let me go. Every
time I go to a National Park I work towards earning my Junior Ranger
badge for that park. So far I have eared my Junior Ranger Badge in the
Rocky Mountain National Park, Great Sand Dunes National Park, Mt.
Rushmore National Monument, Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument,
and now in Yellowstone National Park. I didn’t know it but Yellowstone
also has a cool program at the Old Faithful Geyser called the young
scientist award. Me and my brothers all did that program to so we are
all now young scientists at Yellowstone.
I am a Boy Scout in Colorado and when I was talking to a ranger at
Yellowstone, they told me how to earn my Scout Ranger patch as well.
Guess what, I earned that as well. Now I can put the Scout Ranger patch
on my Boy Scout uniform.
I had a great time camping in the park. We saw lots of animals and I
love to watch them. On the first night arriving at Yellowstone, we saw a
Moose in a field beside the road. My dad pulled over and then we
realized it wasn’t a moose but it was a huge Grizzly Bear. We watched
it for about 10 minutes then it crossed the road behind our truck and
walked over the bank. A crazy lady in a car behind us got out of her
car and was standing only about 20 feet away from the bear to get
pictures. I think she must be pretty stupid to be that close. My dad
rolled down our windows but I yelled at him to put them back up and he
did.
Near our campground we saw a cow Elk every morning. My family thinks
she is the most photographed Elk in Yellowstone because she would stand
beside the road every day all day long and just let people take her
picture. We named her Ms. Yellowstone. We saw tons of things that I
really enjoyed. Even though I can’t really walk much without getting
really tired, we had my wheel chair and my mom and dad took turns
pushing me around. That was fun. In the area where Old Faithful is all
of the walking paths are boardwalks so I was able to go see all of the
geysers in my wheelchair. We saw about 10 different geysers erupt. One
of them was on a riverbank and was called Riverside Geyser. It erupted
about 100 feet into the air.
Another place we went to is called the mud volcano’s of Yellowstone. It
really stunk like rotten eggs there badly. We walked around the 2-mile
loop to see all of the mud pots bubbling. My mom and dad didn’t like
it a lot because the 2-mile loop was mostly up hill and they had to push
me. LOL. When we pulled into the parking lot of the mud volcanoes,
there was a huge bull Buffalo walking around the cars in the parking
lot. We had to stop the truck and wait for the buffalo to get out of
our way so we could park. It walked by my window only about 3 feet
away. It was crazy!
Towards the end of our trip we packed up and left the park on the North
side and camped for a night in Montana (just outside of the park
entrance). We went back into the park the next morning to see some wild
animals. We saw hundreds of Buffalo, and 2 Black Bears. When we were
parked to watch the Buffalo, a Bald Eagle soared over our heads and that
was pretty cool to since the Bald Eagle is our National Bird. We also
heard a pack of Wolves on a hillside howling like craze but we didn’t
actually see them. We did see one single Wolf earlier in the week but
in a different part of the park.
When we left the National Park to go home we went through the
Thermopolis Hot Springs in Wyoming. That was really neat because the
swimming pools are filled from the natural hot springs and were really
warm. The water actually had to be cooled down a bit so people cold
swim in it. The funniest part of the hot springs was when dad wanted to
take me down the water slide. My mom said she thought it was too
dangerous because I might bump my head. That’s when my mom suggested
that we just use the “kiddie” slide since it was a lot safer. My dad
agreed and said he would go down it first so he could catch me at the
bottom. The kiddie slide is only about 10 feet long and not very
dangerous but when my dad went down it he broke his pinky toe! Every
day he picks on my mom now because she said the kiddie slide was safer
and that’s where he got hurt. I know it hurt him but I still laughed
pretty hard. After that my dad was done with the water slides but I
still went on the big slide afterwards and guess what, I bumped my head.
The good thing is that when I bumped my head, my incision from surgery
split open and a little puss came out. That is when we realized that I
had an infection in my head. If I hadn’t bumped my head, I would have
had my Chemotherapy and Central Line placement in 2 days and I would
probably be dead now because my body wouldn’t have been able to recover
from the Chemo. My mom and dad say that bumping my head saved my life.
Thank you very much for a really fun trip even though my brothers and sister annoyed me a lot. I had lots of fun.
Thank you
Click the thumbnails to view the full size image
« Back l Next »
|