Talent Show and Bunburying

Back at my home before everyone started parting ways Uncle Mark had suggested a variety show.  It sounds like a fabulous idea and so we went with it.  Becca started off the show with an Italian (I think?) song that she’s been working on in her voice lessons.  Next Jessie showed us the blanket she’s been crocheting on her loom. Conrad played us a piece on his violin and Abbie shared a picture she had watercolored. Spencer played us Peter, Peter Pumpkin Eater while Alexander tried to join in with a harmony part.  Mark showed us two magic tricks and Uncle Mark played a piece on the piano.  Karina was just loving all the music and couldn’t resist dancing so Mark played a little dancing song too and everyone was just loving it.  Jessie signed the Star Spangled Banner while we all sang along and Dad showed us his recipe book holder he’s making for Rachel.

We finished off the show with one act of a play the Mark, David, Laura, Rachel and I participated in.  It’s about a guy, Algernon, with a pretend friend named Bunbury.  This “friend” lets him get out unpleasant jobs and family events by being sick quite frequently and needing some one to care for him.  Algernon also has a real friend, Jack, who has a double identity, pretending to be one person in town and a different person in the country, but he has a problem and that is that he’s in love and going to be marrying soon.  Uncle Mark had the best accent English accent and the rest of us did our best.

We finished off the night with a slide show of family pictures that Rachel had put together.  Thanks everyone, even the audience!!

Yellowstone–Part 2

Our second day at Yellowstone started at the Norris Geyser Basin.  And some of these geysers didn’t smell so great…like the steamboat geyser.We broke into two groups for this hike too…some of us taking the longer route, some the shorter.  Here’s the longer route group.I just loved the name of this geyser – “puff n’ stuff.”  And had Karina come with us she really wouldn’t have like the way it smelled.Here’s some of the scenery…this was on the other side of the walkway from the puff n’ stuff geyser.This is the Green Dragon Spring… it was so colorful.This is the Blue Mud Steam Vent.  It’s kind of fun to watch mud bubble.And some pretty run off…This name also had us laughing… the Fearless Geyser… as if geysers had something to be afraid of.The group on the shorter walk finished before us (you are surprised right?) and so they left us a note to where they headed next.  We never did catch up to them, but that’s ok we saw each other at the end of the day and everyone had a good time, so that’s what counts.  We headed west over to Canyon Village and guess what…on our drive we saw another buffalo.  It was laying down and there were a bunch of other cars already stopped, so we just carried on.  At the parking lot for the Upper and Lower Falls we ran into Jessie and Grandma’s group just leaving.  And when we started on the trail there was another buffalo napping in the trees – cool!We had heard about Uncle Tom’s trail from one of Becca’s YW leaders and were dying to try out the trail, I mean stairs….Here’s our first glimpse of the Lower Falls.  It was so beautiful!And here are those stairs…Going down them was the easy part, as long as you stopped on a step to take your pictures.  Here’s us at the bottom.  The water was so green coming over the top of the falls.The thing I love about hiking is that coming back along the same trail looks so different than going that each way is a new experience.  Some cool tree roots on the way back up.Conrad and I took it nice and easy on the way up.  It wasn’t hard work, but continuous.  We did count the stairs and there were over 100.  It just made me glad there were stairs and I wasn’t on ropes and pulleys like they used to do.  The view was so beautiful I’d definitely do it again.  When we got back to the top the buffalo woke up and started wondering.  The kids loved this!!!  We had to keep an eye on Spencer so he didn’t get to close.That poor buffalo had quite the itch he was trying to cure…like Baloo in Jungle Book.  He rubbed and rubbed his head on this tree until he snapped it right in half.The day was almost over so we skipped the next trail and just saw the Upper Falls from the look out point.Neil, Abbie and Spencer had a grand time balancing on the logs along the edge of the trail.And when we got back to the car….we found it had been decorated!!

Our very last stop of the day was the Artist Paintpots.  And I think this was about my favorite… or maybe it was the lighting…getting there are just the perfect time of day.  Here’s Mark hiding from the camera behind Conrad.We saw this cute little chipmunk just chowing on this little seed.  Do you love the piece of shell flying through the air?We were snacking on string cheese, but Neil decided that some rocks looked good too, so he tried them.  He was surprised they didn’t taste good and desperately tried to get them back out of his mouth.These tree trunks are white from sucking up some of the minerals from the geysers.  Don’t they look neat?

This is the view from above as the trail starts to circle the around to the other side.More boiling mud, only this mud was white.  Abbie, Uncle Mark, Mark and I snuck under a roped off part of the trail (don’t tell) so we could see it, because we weren’t quite tall enough to see over the piles of rocks.  It had a sign that said Caution: HOT MUD, and you could see that mud had in fact been splattered across the bridge, but the mud wasn’t all that intense while we were there.And we got to see one more animal!Isn’t this beautiful!It was a great day.  Uncle Mark put up with our silly music selections and we got to listen to some of his favorite classical pieces, which we enjoyed too.  Especially as he told about why he like them and what cool “moves” were in them.We made it back to the cabin after dark, ate as many Porcupine Meatballs as our tummies could hold and headed for bed.  And the great thing is that there’s still so much of Yellowstone that we didn’t see that it’ll be fun to go back.

Yellowstone–Day 1

Just a warning: there are a ton of pictures in this post….that’s because I have a hard time picking just one.  So I hope you enjoy.  And if you’ve never been to Yellowstone maybe this will inspire you to try and get there.

Our cabin was only 15 minutes to the park entrance…but from the park entrance to anything is at least 40 minutes.  So Heather and I made a ginormous batch of Tuna Grape Salad at the cabin and I had made up Crescent Rolls at home and frozen them and we packed up the cars and we headed to Old Faithful first.

We found a nice shaded picnic area across the parking lot from Old Faithful and tried to flag down and locate all of the cars in our group as they drove around.  I guess Neil thought he would be helpful too and share with Ken (and check out Jessie in the background).After lunch and numerous potty breaks we all headed towards Old Faithful which had just erupted so it would be 1 1/2 hours until the next show.  There are tons of little geysers behind Old Faithful all connected by this nice little boardwalk.  So that’s where we headed.  Then we broke into smaller groups: the really speedy walkers (which included Grandpa and my Mark), the people without children who wanted to do some climbing (including my brother Mark and Becca) and then two groups of those with small children who just went different ways around the same place.You can barely see it through the trees, but there are the yellow rocks for which Yellowstone was named.Here’s us on the boardwalk with Conrad and Teakettle Spring in the background.I love this one of Karina not wanting to look at the camera.Not only are there geysers but all sorts of fun little runoff areas where the water spraying from the geysers goes.  Most of them are very colorful.The deep blue is the hole into the ground.  Some of the geysers just put off steam, some erupt at random intervals and some are just pools of really hot water.Here’s Abbie, Spencer and me at Doublet Pool.It was hard to get pictures showing how far down into the pools you could see.  I really needed some stilts!Hey, look one is erupting!There were signs EVERYWHERE of this little boy stepping off the path and getting burned by falling through a weak spot in the ground.  Conrad wanted his mom to try and be the little boy :-); they are at Anemone Geyser.The cute baby fell asleep!By now had made the loop and were back at Old Faithful, but we had about a 10 minute wait.  So we had a snack and put more sunscreen down the parts in our hair and waited.  We decided to watch from the backside instead of trying to crowd in with all the people gathered around at the front – check them out, and this was only 1/2 of them!It was quite a spectacular show and lasted longer than I had expected.  And put off tons of steam!  The thing that was so interesting is that all around there is green grass and trees and then just these totally barren hunks of rock and dirt hanging out in the middle of the forests where the geysers are.There was one unusual spectator with us.Afterwards we went around to the front to meet up with the rest of the crew.  The kids entertained themselves while we decided what to do next.

Most of us went to look at the museum/info center.  They had lots of really neat displays, cool facts and explanations of what was happening at the different sites.  It was also air conditioned and had inside bathrooms….lucky us.  We are quite the crew!Next Laura and a group went back to the cabin and started some chicken for dinner and the rest of us went to do a bit more exploring further back behind Old Faithful.  I really wanted to see the Morning Glory Pool which I heard was spectacular.  Neil took a turn riding in the double stroller, but he had to have Ken right with him, he’s such a Daddy’s boy right now.

I love how you can see the clouds reflected in this pool.This is three geysers that play off each other.  I love the rainbow you can see in the steam.  But I’m betting the gold at the end of that rainbow is in its liquid state.After the three there were a bunch of really colorful pools.  The different colors show different temperatures of water with different sustainable bacteria in them.  Neat huh!This is a geyser that blew the side of its “cone” apart.And this one, Grotto Geyser, actually has an old tree stump right in the middle of it that’s coated in rock and minerals.And we finally made it to Morning Glory Pool and it was SO COOL!!!

Jessie rode back to the cabin with my parents, but we had the rest of my kids and David with us and we decided to stop and see a few more things on the way.  David, Mark, Abbie and I went to see the boiling mud.  I think they called them “Paint Pots.”We also saw some pretty big geysers and were able to get way closer than we did at Old Faithful.  That was amazing!  This picture is from at the top of the steps – that’s why they still look far away.

I was telling my kids that I was a little disappointed that the only wildlife we had seen was a chipmunk.  Then as we were headed out of the part a buffalo walked past the car.  David grabbed the camera and took a quick picture.  Those things are STINKIN’ HUGE!  So after that I tried not to be too disappointed that our only sighting was a blurry picture.We got back to the cabin way after dark and Laura had some fabulous  lemon baked chicken with brown rice waiting for us.  It was tender, warm and delicious!  And we were hungry!  Oh, and we got to ride through those fun mud puddles again only Ken was the lucky driver this time :-)!