Where the Buffalo Roam

Although, I guess, bison is considered more correct now...  We finally made it up to Yellowstone!  We were waiting for the summer crowds to die down, but we visited the most popular stops anyway, I think.  The weather was awesome, and we had a good time.  Next time, we'll hopefully do some of the lesser known hotspots and maybe put Owen on a leash...?  :) 

DAY 1

Aforementioned bison.   (I had a delicious bison tenderloin for dinner that night.  Is that wrong?)

Stinky Sulphur Cauldron

Our cabin at the Lake Yellowstone Hotel.

The hotel and Owen's favorite part of the hotel, the ramps:

Lake Yellowstone.  (Side note:  They were having a "natural fire" across the lake, which you can see in the upper right corner of this picture.  Apparently, it was up to 1100 acres, and we could smell smoke at our cabin by the time we were packing up on Sunday morning.  All of the signs said they had it under control, but I was kind of glad to be packing up when we did.)

Historic yellow tour bus or "guck!"

Chipmunk.  They were everywhere.  Love them!

Deer we nearly stumbled upon on our walk back to our cabin from dinner.  It was surprisingly not startled by Owen's running and shouting.  (We trained him to clear the forest of bears by being loud.)

DAY 2
Old Faithful.  Owen was very gregarious and might have a future as a park greeter.  The older crowd loved him!  He stopped to wave and wait on several different groups on our way to the visitor's center.

Giddy with anticipation, waiting for Old Faithful to blow, which it did, right on time.

Hike to the top and view back down to the Old Faithful complex

Boardwalk through the Upper Geyser Basin

He fell asleep early on in the hike.  So when he awoke in the middle of the boardwalks and was whining, we let him out to stretch his legs.  Needless to say, the last part of the boardwalk became a very long and slow walk, sometimes in the wrong direction!

Not even sure he noticed all of the interesting colors, steam, and bubbles around him, since he was so absorbed in running his hand along these benches.

Morning Glory Pool.  The bluer the water, the hotter it is.  Stay out of this one!

We finally wrangled him into the backpack for the walk back to the car.

The inside of the Old Faithful Inn.  Hard to make it out here, but it's all wood, curvy and straight.  Reminded us of something out of Tolkien.

DAY 3
The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River.  Gorgeous.  However, the out-and-back trail we selected basically followed the road, so we kept seeing the same people at the viewpoints because they were getting in and out of their cars.  At the end, they got to get in their car and proceed on out, whereas we had to turn around and hike back to our car at the beginning.  Oh well, lesson learned.  The scenery was worth it!

Brink of the Lower Falls.  Hard to tell, but this is a 308-foot waterfall.  Powerful!

That's Owen just to the right of the crowd on the observation deck.

The view from the trail, looking back at the Lower Falls.  

Boys will be boys

And that means being outside and getting dirty.  Owen really enjoys a good slide now. Unfortunately, he's barefoot on this one because he found a killer mud puddle that rendered his shoes pretty useless for the rest of the day.  (His friend, Carson, nearly lost his shoe in the muck.  It was that kind of mud.)

Speaking of Carson, here are the two boys sharing a nice picnic lunch.  This is shortly before the food ended up in the yard for the dog from a combination of wind and rambunctiousness.

Don't they look mischievous here?

The other day we had the sprinkler going, and Owen (again) is like a magnet for puddles.  Since it was bath night, we let him have at it.  I'll spare you the video, but let's just say this was good, clean fun for probably half an hour (could have been more, I'm sure!).  And yes, that's grass on his face.

Finally, I took Owen to the Eastern Idaho State Fair today.  I think he had fun!

Owen enjoyed checking out the Junior Rodeo Championships.  He was actually watching them and oohing and ahhing right along with the crowd.  We saw girls calf roping and boys riding steers.  Yeehaw!  I think the boys were ages 9-12.  Amazing to see them getting bucked around, falling on the ground, and getting up to do cartwheels.  Just took a move to Idaho to get these Texans to a rodeo.  Ha!

Owen preferred his Lil Crunchies to a delicious, loaded baked potato.  Could be a problem that we live in Idaho and he doesn't like potatoes...?

What can you say about a three-horned goat?  Weird...

They had some of the cleanest cows I've ever seen at the fair.  I actually found myself telling Owen, "pretty cow".  Never thought I'd say that phrase!  :)

 With all the animals in the petting zoo, this is what excited him the most.

Had to get in a picture with the Texas Longhorn!  Hook 'em!

P.S.  My garden is still producing!  Now we're overrun with tomatoes and zucchini and a few raspberries.  This is in addition to the parsley and basil that are thriving outside.  I've made lots of zucchini bread, sauteed zucchini, and donated tomatoes in exchange for a jar or two of a friend's salsa.  I think we'll have to kick it up a notch and do some veggie/tomato soup, tomato sauce/paste, and maybe learn how to can some tomatoes, too.

To the Moon

Craters of the Moon, that is.  This weekend Uncky Dan and Jennifer came to visit.  We had a great time and fabulous weather to boot.  Owen took to his new house guests very quickly, and confused us by calling Dan "Da", which is very close to "Dada".  Anyway, a quick synopsis of the weekend's activities...


Hanging out at home.  There was much reading, crashing of "gucks", and baby stretching to be done.  Not sure how that last one started, but Owen took to it like a duck to water.

Playing frisbee and enjoying the weather at Freeman Park.  This was after we toured the Farmer's Market and the Falls, but pre-dairy.  :)

Craters of the Moon National Monument - about an hour and a half west of us.  I was pleasantly surprised by the scenery here.  All the roads and trails seemed to be in good condition, and it wasn't as hot as I imagined it would be.  Lots of different volcanic rocks strewn everywhere and interesting geology to observe.  One of the videos told us that we were visiting at a good time, before the next eruption in approximately 1000 years.  Lucky us!

Checking out the wheelchair-accessible Trail of Admonishment (all of the signage along this trail was chastising about visitors' effects on the landscape/environment, rather than informative about what you were seeing in front of you).  Shame on you, humans!  So, we renamed the trail from Devil's Orchard.  Talk about a downer!

Hiking along the North Crater Trail.  The top pic is along the rim of the crater pictured below where a tree is trying to grow way at the bottom.  It was a pretty amazing panorama that doesn't really translate to a little point-and-shoot camera, but you get the idea!

Sappy pinecones along the trail.  Photo courtesy of Uncky Dan. 

Exploring lava tubes.  This one was called Indian Tunnel and had a lot of daylight.  You can just make out Dan's silhouette at the bottom of the opening below.  We also went down Beauty Cave, which required a flashlight.  Owen slept through that one.  :)

Mother Nature

In a week that brought earthquakes and hurricanes to unusual places, we were able to experience and appreciate the more serene, aesthetic work of Mother Nature.  And we did it in style!  (Noting the impending winter ahead, we opted for a ubiquitous Outback to brave the mountains.)  So far, so good.  It's inspired us to get out a little more, so we did!

Now back to nature.  This past weekend, John's work had a mandatory BBQ out at a local lake.  It had a pretty setting among the hills that reminded us of Austin/Lake Georgetown.  The hills are a bit bigger here though, I think.  :)  Now we know where all of the boats/jet skis we see in town are headed.  Some water fun was had, but Owen mostly enjoyed standing on the floating dock (the floor is moving!) and people watching.

The day after that, we ventured an hour north for a picnic/hike around Mesa Falls, which (I believe I read) are the largest falls in Idaho that have not been tampered with for hydroelectric purposes.  The upper falls had a nice planked trail that took you right down to the edge of the 100'+ waterfall.  Notice the double rainbow in the mist a few pics down.

Then we packed Owen up in the backpack and headed down the trail for a closer view of the lower falls.  He made it about 3 minutes before he totally passed out in the backpack.  It was an easy 2-mile hike (not especially scenic, but lots of signs about bears!) with the roaring river as background noise.  He woke up as we were returning to the visitor center, so he missed the whole thing!

He was, however, awake for the whole drive home after his cat nap in the backpack.  Even his fringy pillow didn't lull him to sleep!