Yellowstone Moment

For my 60th birthday Jeff and I went to Yellowstone.  It is one of my very favorite places.  I have been going to Yellowstone since I was probably a baby.  There was a long period of time when I didn't have the opportunity to go.  Now, I live within three hours or less of the park and try to go once a year with just me and the hubby or every other year with my entire family.  I know people don't understand why I like it so but I just do.  One reason is that it is so different.  There are so many components to Yellowstone and yet they all fit together.

This time, both of us just needed a weekend of quiet and Jeff really needed to get away from Blackfoot.  We left on Friday and went to Mack's Inn.  We saw a satire called The Three Amigos from Del Taco.  It was fun and just silly.  Saturday morning we were up early and headed for West Yellowstone for breakfast but decided to wait and drive into the park and go to Mammoth.  Mammoth has less people visiting and is somewhat quiet.  I love to see the elk lying by the side of the houses there.  We had breakfast and wandered around.  It was very relaxing.  Then we drove along down to Canyon.  We stopped along the way several time.  We saw two bears, elk, deer, prong horn, and a fox carrying a bird it had just caught for it's lunch.  We took lots of pictures of the landscape this time since we were not out hunting for animals.  I really enjoyed just the massiveness of the park.  You have to drive a lot but you can also get out and walk and hike.  It was a little cool but a beautiful day to start with then it warmed up for a very nice day.  We didn't go into the canyon to see the waterfall.  We stopped at several other waterfalls along the way.  We were trying to avoid any crowd.  We did stop at Tower to see the waterfall and talked to some nice people from Arizona who were freezing in the 60 degrees.  A chipmunk entertained us while we had huckleberry ice cream and then scurried on. We only saw one lonely buffalo.  That is unusual for our trips.  We usually wind up in a herd.

We headed back to West Yellowstone for dinner and to see the play at the PlayMill.  It was a fun day and a relaxing day.   We bought way too much moose stuff.  Jeff got to see a moose in the river as he went speeding by and that is why I didn't get to see it.  Oh well.  Now I guess I will have to really get my basement Yellowstoned so I can put out all my moose stuff. 

We left Sunday and went to Mesa Falls in Island Park.  It is remote and very beautiful.  There is a lodge there built in the early 1900s.  They had a telescope set up to look at a Osprey nest across the river.  There is an upper falls and a lower falls.  It is beautiful country.  However, the mosquitoes about killed us.  I didn't even think of bug spray this trip.  I won't forget it again.  The lodge is mainly a visitors center but has interesting bones and skulls of animals and history of the lodge and the falls.  There is a black bear on display there with a sign saying it was on loan from so and so.  When we went to purchase a few things at the front desk manned by a little old lady in a ranger outfit we noticed that her name was the same one on the bear.  Jeff asked if she was the same person and she said a short yes.  Then he asked if she had killed the bear and she answered yes.  Then i said, trying to get her to expand on the story, that it must have been quite an experience and again, a short yes reply.  We gave up on getting to the bottom of the story.  Maybe some other time.

We could see the Tetons very clearly from the road by Mesa Falls and took a lot of pictures.  We slowly headed home.  If it wasn't for the horrible wind through Rexburg and Idaho Falls it would have stayed a peaceful and relaxing trip.  Am I surprised at wind in Idaho.  No, but I keep hoping it will not blow everyday.