Yellowstone Vacation

In order to squeak in a vacation before wheat harvest started up, my parents and I took a long weekend trip to Yellowstone National Park. My parents honeymooned there thirty years ago and have fond memories of the beautiful scenery. (Yep, those are the only memories of which I care to be informed.) This is the hotel where they stayed back in 1979.

We stayed outside the park in West Yellowstone, Montana. This is the view from that hotel. Even there the scenery was beautiful!

With gorgeous weather, we truly enjoyed taking in various sights. I’m amazed at the diversity of the place. You’ve got steaming hot sulfur-water running into clear blue freshwater lakes and rivers. There are wide open meadows and mountains in the distance. Apparently those features are due to it being a huge blown-to-bits, but still active, volcano. The caldera (aka: crater formed when a volcano collapses or explodes really violently) is enormous – like, 1,500 square miles. And while I hope it doesn’t explode and, God forbid, change the landscape of beautiful Western Nebraska, it certainly is an area fraught with earthquakes. As many as 3,000 earthquakes per year are recorded. The most recent major earthquake was in 1959 – the year both of my parents’ families just happened to make trips to Yellowstone within the same summer. Although they were too young to have remembered a definitive year, the news of a big earthquake after their visits aids their memory in figuring out a timeline.

Anyway, no big earthquakes for us. But, boy, did we see bears! When you’re repeatedly told you won’t see bears, you tend to think you won’t. Quite on the contrary, we ended up seeing five! We saw a cinnamon black bear (I think), a black bear momma with two cubs, and another black bear. We also saw several elk (cows and bulls), a bald eagle (next to the nest in which we earlier saw an eaglet), a beaver, and lots of buffalo. I kept my eyes peeled for wildlife, but by far the best indicator were traffic jams. Everyone must stop and watch any animal they can see up close and personal, you know. I can’t say I blame them; I wanted to do the same. I was ticked when I missed a photo opp. for the momma bear because a park official insisted traffic keep moving. Dang it. At least I got a picture of one cub.

Ah! How could I forget – I got to stumble over a couple Russian words! I overheard a man say “nyet”, and then sheepishly asked what language he was speaking. (The place is packed with foreign tourists, speaking all sorts of languages.) I really lit up when he said Russian, but in that instant, the few Russian words I’ve learned vanished. At first, I couldn’t even say hello. Now there’s motivation to keep studying…

On our way home, we went through Grand Teton National Park. We stopped by a self-guided tour of one of the first people to settle in the area. He had quite the view...

We also stopped in Jackson, WY. In their town square, they've got four archways made of elk antlers. The antlers have been collected by the Boy Scouts. Quite the place!