Travel reports and advice for families for the best outdoor experiences, including national and state park visits, camping or glamping
Over the past 50 years, the Baisch family has found more than 1,000 dinosaur bones and fossils on their sprawling cattle ranch in the small town of Glendive. They’ve donated some to museums, sold others and welcome visitors like us to hunt for their own ($75 a half-day for an adult, free for kids under 12). While paleontologists might not approve, the Baisches allow visitors to keep most of what they find….
In the 50-plus years since, Baisch and her family have found more than a thousand dinosaur bones and fossils on their sprawling Eastern Montana ranch near the small town of Glendive. More dinosaur bones are found in Eastern Montana than anywhere else because of the rock formation, we learn….
I look out and try to imagine thousands of teepees and 30,000 ponies on a scorching June day in 1876, just before the nation’s centennial. Above all the tribal leaders from the different tribes was Sitting Bull, dedicated to the traditional Indian ways and opposed to relationships with the white people after being pushed out of the Black Hills when gold was discovered.
The kids are sorry our adventure is over. So are their parents. Mike Sitzman, Hannah and Ethan’s dad, has had a real vacation—not often the case when kids are part of the equation– because, “The guides facilitated 100 per cent of the experience. I didn’t have to worry about where to park or having water… They even brought our suitcases to the rooms and got us checked in.” That’s not counting how much knowledge they shared.
The park is packed with families — especially around Old Faithful (just one of the park’s 300 geysers) and in the new children’s discovery area at the Old Faithful Visitor Center. The National Park Service says the vast majority of visitors don’t get more than a quarter-mile from the road though only about 3 percent of the vast park can be seen from that vantage point. That was why we opted to let Austin-Lehman lead the way.
Welcome to perhaps America’s greatest natural zoo— Yellowstone National Park with 67 species of mammals, 322 species of birds, 6 species of reptiles, 4 species of amphibians where the kids—my nine-year-old cousin Ethan Sitzman and his six- year-old sister Hannah have been naming the wild life as we go…Betty and Bobby Eagle…Oscar Osprey…Brett Bison…. And today we spot bear!
We were camping in a wilderness site on Yellowstone Lake in Yellowstone National Park and had spent the morning kayaking, stopping in a meadow full of wildflowers to fish, fly a kite and catch frogs. The wildflowers were gorgeous– purple (lupine), blue (columbine), yellow (buttercups), red (Indian Paint Brush) and white (Elk Thistle. And the kite was certainly fun, brought along by our intrepid Austin Lehman Adventure guides Matty Kirkland and Katie Gugliotta, who also brought a football to toss and gave Ethan and six-year-old Hannah some lessons in rock-skipping.
Certainly we could tour Yellowstone on our own but Austin Lehman has been guiding families in the vast park for 25 years and this is an opportunity to get away from the hordes of tourists (up more than 10 per cent last year from 2009 with 3.6 million visitors) and experience the park with those who know it well. Sadly, the majority of visitors don’t get more than a quarter of a mile from the road when there are thousands of hiking trails in the park.
Ten seconds of sheer terror or the most fun you’ve ever had. It’s all a matter of perspective. We’re at Big Sky Mountain Resort in Big Sky Montana at the edge of the first Zip line of the morning. Did I mention I’m supposed to fly across 425 feet—60 feet above the mountain tops at 25 miles per hour? No sweat says my young cousins nine-year-old Ethan Sitzman and his six-year-old sister Hannah, who are geared up, like I am, with safety harness, helmet and carabineers that will attach us to the cables. I’m told they are so strong they could hold the weight of a small car but I’m still nervous.
This is the first morning of our guided trip to Montana and Yellowstone, arranged by Montana-based Austin Lehman Adventures, which has been guiding visitors to Yellowstone and beyond for more than two decades—several hundred families a year. The company sends adventurous families around the world but Yellowstone remains their signature trip and the Museum of the Rockies is a great place to start.