Sick Days: Yellowstone, the fourth leg of our EPIC road trip

August 2018

Remember how I said my sister-in-law didn't feel well by the end of Day 2? By the time I made it to the kitchen the next morning (Thursday), I learned that not only was she sick, but several others had bit the dust through the night. As breakfast went on, people just kept dropping. Before long, 10 of the 13 adults were in bed with flu-like symptoms. To be clear, we still had 12 healthy, energetic children aged 6 and younger. As people kept going down, it became clear to me that someone was going to have to take charge of the kids. I was still healthy, for the moment, so I took over. I sent all the sick parents away, sent one healthy older brother-in-law to the store for comfort food, medicine and Gatorade, and then made lunch for all the kids - four boxes of macaroni, strawberries, grapes, carrot sticks, and chips. I also went to my room and brought out my boxes of toys I had brought to entertain my kids in the car and in the cabin at Colorado because this cabin was fairly destitute of toys. I had no idea how long this sickness was going to last but I decided I was now in charge for the foreseeable future.

My brother-in-law returned victorious from the store with LOADS of Gatorade, chicken soup, meds and lots of cleaning supplies. Haha! He's got good priorities to remember the cleaning supplies. While the kids were entertained with toys, I made chicken noodle soup and rice pudding (we had so much rice leftover from dinner the night before). Sometime mid-afternoon, the older brother-in-law and the oldest grandchild came down with the sickness and the care of 11 sick adults and 1 sick kid was down to just me and a younger brother-in-law who had been running drinks and comfort food around the house to all the sickies. About this time, the kids had cabin fever and were going nuts so my bro-in-law and I walked 8 kids aged 1-5 years down the road to a playground to burn some energy. That burned my energy, that's for sure! But it also burned some of theirs and was actually really fun! The girls all snuggled on this swing for a while. My hope is that the kids still had a fantastic day with cousins, and the adults got some much needed rest despite the kink in our plans.

Lazy afternoon at the cabin

The sickness turned out to be a 24-hour ordeal though it left everyone fairly drained of energy. We have no idea how we got it - we guessed food poisoning from the lunch meat or dinners we all shared or maybe something in the tap water. We don't think anyone brought it with them as far as we could tell because the first twelve people to get sick all went down within about twelve hours. We decided it must have been something there in the cabin which is sad. We really don't know.

James was still feeling pretty tired on Friday and Audrianne had become sick through the night, but the other kids and I felt great so while James and Audri stayed at the cabin to rest, I took my kids on an adventure alone to see if we could find some bison - a nice safe adventure, right? This search was important to me as the bison is the Kansas state animal and we could not leave Yellowstone without seeing them for my childhood's sake. Of course, the kids fell asleep on the way. It's a long drive every day just to get to Yellowstone! Haha, then you have to drive to the right place in Yellowstone. It was probably a two-hour drive.

Sleepy kids again

We did get to see them! And super close-up even.

A Bison! (not a buffalo)

Abi was getting sick of posing for pictures - clearly

We drove over to the lake to check it out and turns out you can swim and wade all you want. Had I known that, I'd have packed for the day differently. But honestly, if we were all feeling well, we'd have learned this sooner and our whole family would have enjoyed this together for an entire afternoon. As it was, we didn't have a ton of time to spend here but it was worth the small moment. The sand is black volcanic sand! That was neat to see.

Wading in Yellowstone Lake

We actually got to see so many bison! It was a ton of fun to drive through the meadow where there were probably hundreds. Abi loved it! And we rolled down the windows so we could hear the noises they were making. They grunt a lot! Hyrum was even mimicking them by the end.

So many bison! The kids loved it!

Friday also happened to be my brother-in-law's birthday. The poor kid spent it sick in a foreign home, but he and most of us felt well enough to enjoy some cake.

Bradley's birthday!

Audrianne was so miserable-looking! It was so heartbreaking because I wanted to hold her and care for her but I was also keen to avoid getting sick if I could. James did a good job comforting her while I kept taking care of the healthy kids. It was a decent trade off.

She was SO SICK!

Saturday James felt well again (although Audrianne still was not keeping food down) and we were running out of time at Yellowstone so we loaded up our kids and a brother-in-law and went in search of adventure. We wanted James to see the bison and we all had a few geyser/hot spring things we wanted to see.

Beautiful landscape

We made it out again

Gurgling little thing

So many colors!

Abi was cracking us up with this sign. It's difficult to see in this picture but the sign shows a kid stepping on a hot spot of ground and an adult female looking very concerned while an adult male walks away without noticing. As Abi tells it, the mom says, "No, don't go there!" And the dad says, "Oh well, I tried." Haha!

"Oh well! I tried..."

Doesn't she look tired?

My cute little rangers

It went well but by halfway through the day, I knew I was getting sick. I fought it hard so that we could all enjoy the scenery for as long as possible. Oh the nausea was awful! I managed to make it home and get to bed to sleep. I was super disappointed though as it was our day to cook dinner and we had such a great plan. In the end, no one had much of an appetite the whole week and very little food was consumed. So much for that amazing Walmart trip...

Look at all that!

By Sunday, all adults had gotten sick, as well as eight kids - essentially 21 of the 25 of our group got sick. Abi and Hyrum stayed healthy! Phew! But since we had so many sick people and so many vulnerable still, we had our own church meeting there in the cabin. It was very sweet and the best way to spend our Sabbath. Several groups did drive around the park again that day including James, Abi, Hyrum and two of his brothers. I think they had a good time. I stayed with Audrianne and held the fort down for the two of us - she still was not holding food down.

We did SO MUCH LAUNDRY that week!!! Whoa! So much yucky laundry. You know you're family when you can all hole up in one cabin and be sick together. Good memories!

Here we all are, some healthy, some sick, all of us happy!

The whole Harper clan