Our typical breakfast scene: grapefruit and sausage links, toast, cereal...and cookies! Breakfast dessert only happens on vacation, you know!
This girl was excited that she was nearly as tall as some of the young trees we camped by.
I always wondered how they came up with so many names for all the various places and springs and vista points. This was Angel Terrace.
I think this is the other side of Angel Terrace. We didn't get close as we had many other stops we wanted to make.
Antelope! We watched these two, and one more frolic through the grass. They seemed pretty skittish. But they were fun to watch.
I did mention that we saw a few bison, right? Well, these guys were road hogs. We had to wait for them to cross the road before we could continue on our way!
This was my view as I was trying to drive. At this moment, there was a bison wandering closer to Eric's side of the car and he tried to insist that I go faster because he did not like how close it was getting. But I could not go anywhere! It was a tense few moments.
A while later, far away from the previous herd of bison came this fellow. We had parked our car so we could have lunch. In this picture you can't see him, but Eric is behind the car and actually only about 20 feet away from that bison in the picture! He ambled over the hill that was just across the road and walked right past us, behind the car. After Mark pointed him out to Eric, Eric said he was going to pretend not to see him and just let us decide if we needed to take any defensive measures!
It was getting dark as there was a storm approaching. During lunch we noticed these Quaking Aspen trees across the field from us. They are so pretty against the dark background.
As we drove on we escaped the rain for a while and stopped to overlook the valley that we had just driven through. Yellowstone is so BIG! I never knew how BIG it was. (I guess I never really thought about it either.) I had fun being out and away from all the people and cars and cars and concrete we normally see.
A closer look at the lodgepole pine trees: They are self-pruning!(Hey Sarah, maybe THIS is the kind of tree you want for your yard?!)
I forgot to mention that this was Sunday! Because Rod had to work in the morning and during the day, we did our sightseeing right away in the morning. Then we came back to attend the park worship service in the evening with Rod and Linda. This was our view as we worshiped the One who created the mountains, rivers, bison, and deer we had been seeing so much of this week. And even during the service there were elk in the distance.
As the sun begins to set, we are not done yet for the day: We want to make the most of our time, and daylight! On to the Norris Geyser Basin.
More hot springs of beautiful color and neat looking steam...
On our way to see the World's Tallest Geyser
Steamboat Geyser-- here you can see it is spurting just a bit of water. Little did we know that in 2 days it would blow! I think we can officially say that we saw some of the before "shocks" of water that happen as it gets ready to go off. This geyser is extremely unpredictable. One year it went off 23 times!
At the time we saw it, it hadn't gone off since 2005. They say the spray of this geyser can reach up to 400 feet up in the air. Wow! Compare that to the average of Old Faithful, which is 130 feet.
Some of us didn't like the sulfur smell. The rest of us tried not to think about it ;)
Rod is explaining something technical to Eric and Payton.
It is always good to end on a laugh.
what a great vacation!
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