Fun with Cousins and Graduation Trip Part 1 (Yellowstone)

After Penny's party, we enjoyed getting to see my brother, Penny's uncle, Brad and his wife April and their four kids.  Penny doesn't get to see her cousins too often, so the short time together was special.  We enjoyed taking them to a lake, to Asian markets and a really nice indoor pool.  The last thing we did was to go up to Estes Park with them.  We had planned to visit Rocky Mountain National Park, but those plans got changed when their car got involved in a fender bender accident.  Fortunately, no one was hurt and there was minimal damage to their new van.  Here we are at the YMCA of the Rockies.

Unfortunately, after we said "goodbye" to them we ate at a restaurant, after which I seemed to catch an intestinal bug, which I just have started getting over, recently after almost two weeks.  I finally started getting over it while we were on our trip to Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons.  It was a graduation gift for Penny, who always wanted to go there.  It's going to be very hard to choose from my MANY photos, but I'll try to pick out a few of the best ones for this blog.  The first ones are from when we first arrived at Yellowstone.  We came in from the east entrance, after having stayed in Cody, WYO.

Then we stopped for a picnic lunch and ended up seeing a buffalo or bison right near our picnic area.

After that we stopped at Mud Volcano, where two bison came right across the boardwalk area where the people walk.

After that we went to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone lower falls.

Next, we went to see Old Faithful, which we were able to see go off right after we ate dinner at the Lodge.  Jay didn't make it outside in time to see it, but Penny and I did and we enjoyed the spray from the water when the wind came up.

After that, we made our way to the West exit as we stayed in a hotel outside of West Yellowstone, Montana.

The following day we headed back into the park to see the Gibbon Falls...

Then we took a hike at the Artists' Paint Pot area.  It was getting really hot!

After that we took just a short hike to see Steamboat Geyser in the Norris Geyser basin area.

Following that, we ate a picnic lunch at a nicely shaded picnic area just east of the Norris Basin area.  After lunch, we stopped at Canyon Village to take a break and fill up our water bottles.  I was feeling rather overheated from the 90 degree heat at high altitude.  Then we stopped at some other lookout points along the falls of the Grand Canyon where we got to see a mama and baby ospreys in their nest.  After that, drove through the Tower-Roosevelt area on our way to Mammoth Hot Springs, so that we could meet up with Jay's best buddy, Nathan and his wife and daughter and his wife's parents.  We were delighted to see at least three bears, including a grizzly bear, along this portion of the road.  However, I didn't get a good photo of the grizzly.  It's really hard to tell from this photo, but the dark brown blob under the trees is a bear cub.  Jay got a good video shot of the grizzly and got to see a mama black bear.

We also saw more bison and lots of pretty wild flowers.



Finally, we got to see Jay's friends.  It was the first time for Nathan's parents-in-laws to get to see Yellowstone as they were on their first visit to America from China.  It was really fun to meet them.

After our visit with Jay's friends we headed north out of the park to stay in Gardiner, Montana, seeing some elk on the way there.

We enjoyed eating at a Western-style pizza place for dinner.

The following morning we headed back to the Mammoth Springs area to do some hiking and it got real hot, again!

After that we headed south back towards the Norris Geyser Basin to see the Museum of the National Parks Ranger.

As you can see, Penny was getting sick of me asking her to take her picture.



After that, we found a place to picnic near the Firehole River, after which we took the Firehole Lake Drive, home to the Great Fountain Geyser.  But, since there was a four-hour window of time in which it could erupt, we opted to get back in the car and just drive on to Old Faithful.  We were so hot that we ate ice cream there first and then Jay got a chance to watch it erupt. I'm afraid I didn't capture them in the best photogenic light in this photo.

After that we went to the West Thumb Geyser Basin area near Yellowstone Lake.  I think it was one of the prettiest areas we saw in Yellowstone.  The colors of the different pots were brilliant and so pretty next to the lake with mountains in the background.  They had just had a rain shower go through that area before we arrived and so it finally cooled down.

We also lucked out and saw a huge elk buck with big antlers sitting right by our car in the parking lot.

After we left this pretty place, we headed south out of the park and into the Grand Teton National Park.  But, that will be the next blog entry.  Stay tuned!