Yellowstone National Park

I have now mixed up the timeline of our trip on here. We went to Yellowstone BEFORE Jackson. Sigh. But somehow I did the Jackson post first. You just never can tell. 

After leaving convention, we headed west to Yellowstone. 

Can you imagine haying in this setting? I would stare at the scenery and mess my rows all up. 

East Yellowstone

A lovely fluffy flower I forget the name of. But it does have a name, never you fear. 

Isn't it sweet? 

So many waterfalls!

This was right outside the car. As in I rolled down the window and got damp from the spray. 

East Yellowstone is not looking it's very best these days. It looks a lot like this. Apparently a wildfire went through and changed the look of things. 

Sort of desolate in spots.

But it is nicely green and blue!

Shimmery, shining Yellowstone Lake

At the entrance to the park, they gave the kids checklists so they could cross out the wildlife as they saw them. The kids took this very seriously. 

We crossed out Bison about 369 times, but didn't see anything else. 

Quintessential Yellowstone--steamy hot springs, buffalo grazing, and people.

Going to see a biffalo-buffalo-bison. 

(We listened to that AA Milne poem about the zoo too much.)

We watched closely to see if this would develop into an interesting situation, but apparently the buffalo decided to ignore the stupid tourists. 

So we decided to see if we could provoke it to wrath. 

Uhhhhh.... can we back up a little here, kids? 

Whatever, peeps. I will just keeping chomping on the grass.

A family self portrait--the shadow part is Justin taking the picture.

All so nice and wild

A lovely old ugly tree

Grassy plains. 

River valleys

Buffalo wallows

Artist's Point

Fiona had a National Geographic issue about Yellowstone and I decided I needed to see this place.

Mossy branches

I lament, I mourn, I weep over my lack of adequate photographic skills that could balance the light.

So washed out. 

But it was cool!!

Geothermals

Old Faithful was very obliging. We walked up to just as it was beginning to erupt.

And bingo! Front row seats and all. 

And then it died back down.

After Old Faithful, we headed to the South entrance, bound for Jackson. Yellowstone is pretty big. I was amazingly sleepy before we got out of that place. 

As we drove along, we listened to a Phil Coulter CD I got from goodwill a few years ago. It is all instrumentals, so the kids entertained themselves by deciding what sort of songs they were--"This one is like getting lost. Lost in Yellowstone!" or "This is like the end of a good day, like today was." or Gilbert's "I think someone died in this song." (That is invariably his declaration about any song with a minor key or slow tempo.) 

This was so amazingly awesome! Too bad I can't take a decent picture of it. BUT the moon, the water, the moon reflection on the water, the trees, the stillness of the night.....

Doesn't the pine part look completely and utterly fake? 

It isn't.