Travel Blog

I have only one excuse for not writing a blog last week...I didn't feel like it. In my defense, I have had the sniffles lately. So I sent Phil to town alone while I hibernated with my Vabo-Rub-laden t-shirt.

Things are winding down here. Not so many tourists these days. But the weather has been freakishly warm, which I hate. It's supposed to be sweatshirt and jersey weather right now. I've been seeing way too many folks in tank tops and shorts here lately. But I guess we don't have to worry about getting snowed in.

Phil and I haven't been all that active lately, but we did go for a walk down by the river behind our RV to see if any moose were hanging out. We didn't see any live animals, but we did see this:

Now, there have been bear sightings around the park lately, so we were extra careful.

After tromping around our campground for awhile, we decided to drive out to Slide Lake. It is called that because a long time ago a whole hunk of the mountain above the town of Kelly came crashing down and formed a dam and flooded out the town. You can see where the sliding occurred on the mountain, and I guess that damming formed the lake. We got out of the truck and looked down at the bottom and saw big hunks of rock. It was really cool. Then we saw this sign:

We thought it best not to try to go down that particular road. We are, however, going back to Slide Lake with our new inflatible kayak tomorrow. We'll take some pictures and tell you how that goes. Don't worry...we bought a couple of life vests today, so we're all set.

I'm not sure what to call this following picture. Phil took it while we were in the area of Slide Lake, but I'm not sure what it's called.

After leaving Slide Lake, we took the scenic Mormon Row drive and ran into a herd of bison.

We were dutiful park employees and warned a fellow who came to talk to us that his wife was getting way too close to some bison, but he just replied that she had plenty of life insurance, so we left it at that.

Last Thursday, we had lunch at Dornan's with our friend Cherie and her boss at the Yellowstone Associaiton. When we pulled into Dornan's, we saw the old Yellowstone street cars parked there, and that made us think of Skagway, who also had these cars.

We had a good lunch, and discussed coming back to Yellowstone to work next summer. We still mulling. It's either going to be there or the Grand Teton Association again.

This morning, Phil kicked me out of bed because I had stupidly said last night for him to make sure I didn't sleep in because I wanted to go see the moose that are usually out in the morning. The sun wasn't even fully up yet when we started walking, but we did see moose. The cow and her baby who've been hanging around were by the park office, and a bunch of folks were already there taking their picture. We took some too, but it was still to dark to get a good shot. So we walked around a bit more, and saw that there were two more moose at the other end of the campground. We headed over and got to see them for a few seconds before they went tearing off like their hides were on fire. They ran one direction at full tilt, stopped and fought a bit, and then high-tailed it back they way they had come at full speed. We have no idea what set them off, but it was fun to watch. They make some weird noises when they're mad. We didn't get any good pictures of them, though, because of them running so fast.

So we decided to head on home. Phil took his one artsy shot of the day:

When we were close to our RV, we saw that the photographers had scared the mom and baby our way. The sun was finally up enough for us to get some good pictures, practically in our own backyard. I told Phil that I wouldn't have had to get up early afterall.

The baby had had such a time running from folks that he decided it was time to lay down just a couple sites down from our RV.

That mess behind it is where the new employee RV sites are being built. Our neighbors, Alycyn and Lee came over about then, and we all just hung out talking and watching the moose. The "NO PUBLIC ACCESS" signs actually kept the other photographers out of our neighborhood (at least mostly), so I got this last shot of them taking pictures of the moose.

Doesn't it look like she's telling them off? Hee hee.

That's about all the news for now. We have three days of work left, with our last day being Monday. Then it's on to the Grand Canyon. We've decided to by an annual Park's Pass, and just go nuts on the way down. I think Phil has it planned for us to go to Mesa Verde, Zion, Bryce, Canyonlands and Arches. There may even be more that we can squeeze in. We're really excited, and will keep in touch as best we can while we're traveling.