Somehow life has gotten so busy. Michael has started working full-time and is enjoying it so far. He is working on his first project at a hospital in Philadelphia. Many of you know that we are still living in Salt Lake City, so he commutes to Philly Monday-Wednesday and works from home Thursday and Friday. The company pays for all of his expenses associated with traveling (flight, hotel, and food). Dominic is always very excited to see him on Wednesday nights.
As for me, I manage to stay busy with Dominic and working part-time. Although I have downsized to only one part-time job from the three I had in Connecticut (child care, QEEG analyst, and route setter at the climbing gym), I haven't noticed a surplus of free time...As is evident from the lack of blogging.
Although life has become very busy, we did get the opportunity to visit Yellowstone last weekend! Here are some lovely pictures:
We arrived in West Yellowstone, Montana in the evening and settled into our hotel in preparation for our busy touring days ahead of us.
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| Checking into our hotel: The White Buffalo |
After a breakfast buffet Saturday morning, we started into the National Park.
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| Our first wildlife sighting inside the Park |
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| Bison are quite funny to watch as they try to stand up. They flop over on their backs and then rock back to their feet. |
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| Feeling the warm thermal pools |
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| He loves rocks. Big or Small. |
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| Gibbon Falls |
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| Gibbon Falls |
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| Beryl Spring |
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| Artist Paintpots |
Dominic was getting a kick out of the bubbling mud.
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| Dominic watching one of the geysers |
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| Orange Spring Mound |
For anyone who's interested, here is an interesting description of what causes the bright orange mound pictured above.
Three throws, three different exposures:
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| Flight |
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| Mammoth Hot Springs |
I had seen lots of beautiful pictures of Mammoth Hot Springs, so I was excited to see it.
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| Mammoth Hot Springs |
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| Mammoth Hot Springs |
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| Crazy cool formations on the ground |
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| Angry bull elk in town seeking female companionship (what you can't see are the 20 or so female elk to the right). Police ushered the crowds to safety after the elk started feeling threatened. |
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| Undine Falls |
Following our visit to Undine Falls, we embarked on a hike to Wraith falls. The falls themselves were a little dry, but we enjoyed the hike at dusk nonetheless.
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| The end of our hike to Wraith Falls |
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| Sunset |
We saw lots of beautiful geysers, mineral hot springs, waterfalls, bison and elk the first day. We ended the day by hiking to some hot springs in the dark and enjoying a quick soak before racing back to the car to leave the parking area before curfew (for fear of our car being gated in) We didn't return to the hotel until after dark and we were all quite satisfied with our first day.
To our delight, while we were waiting for Old Faithful to erupt, Beehive Geyser erupted in the background. Apparently it had erupted pretty regularly during the summer, but had become quite erratic, so we were delighted to see it. It shot probably 200 ft in the air and lasted about 5 minutes.
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| Old Faithful steaming on the left while Beehive Geyser erupts in the background |
Shortly after Beehive erupted, Old Faithful sung her song. Although I have to admit, I didn't think it was that impressive. Perhaps Beehive stole some of Old Faithful's steam, literally.
After seeing Old Faithful erupt, we explored the surrounding area as we made our way to Morning Glory Pool.
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| Grotto Geyser - The odd shape comes from sinter accumulating over dead tree stumps as the geyser erupted. |
I learned that Morning Glory was originally called "Convolutus", with is the Latin name for the morning glory flower.
As we returned from the 3-mile walk to Morning Glory Pool, we were just in time to see Old Faithful erupt a second time. What timing! And this time the eruption was a little more powerful and majestic, supporting my suspicion that Beehive Geyser had stolen some of it's glory erupting just moments earlier.
We were sad to leave the Upper Geyser Basin, but knew we had lots to cram in if we wanted to make an early return to our hotel to watch Michael's sister on national live television as one of the two trophy girls on The Emmy's!
So, we continued our journey. Next up: Yellowstone lake. It was significantly bigger then I had expected.
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| Yellowstone Lake-The largest high alpine (above 7,000 ft) lake in North America |
We continued our drive along the Yellowstone River in search of Yellowstone's Grand Canyon.
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| Yellowstone River |
We drove to the edge of Yellowstone's Grand Canyon and were greeted with this beautiful view of the Upper Falls.
A beautiful hawk soared in and took perch 5 feet from me on this hand rail and embarked in a staring contest with me for several minutes.
We hiked down to the top of the Lower Falls of Yellowstone's Grand Canyon to find this breathtaking view as the sun was nestling down beyond the horizon.
I wished we could have spent more time at this Grand Canyon, but we had an appointment with the Emmy's that we were all excited about, so we set on our way back to the hotel. On the drive back to the hotel, we were luck enough to catch this little beauty off in a meadow.
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| Gratefully the river was standing between him and I (although I'm sure he could have swam over and charged me faster then I could have evaded.) |
Monday morning we began our drive back to Utah, but not without making a few stops on the way.
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| Mesa Falls |
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Cave Falls -although we were saddened to see that the cave, for which the falls were named, had recently collapsed.
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| Cave Falls - Boys will be boys. Throwing rocks |
We took a short hike to Bechler Falls as our final destination before returning home.
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| Deb hiking |
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| Bechler Falls - We really enjoyed the fall foliage this trip! |
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| Bechler Falls |
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| Dominic - tuckered out from a packed weekend of sight seeing |
We all had a lovely trip and hope to return someday to visit the northeastern corner that we just didn't have time to visit this time around.
I'll try not to be a stranger and do better at shorter, more regular posts. If you made it to this final sentance of the blog, you are either a family member or a Yellowstone enthusiast. :)
