The Last Week of Yellowstone Bliss

Last week in Yellowstone

Our time in Yellowstone ended with a bang. On Sunday the branch had a taco potluck. I made my salsa. It was delicious, if I do say so myself. We said our goodbyes to some of the families that we wouldn’t see again before we left. It was pretty sad and delicious. I’m gonna miss that branch. I’ve never felt so welcome in a ward. We never had to prove ourselves. We didn’t have to do much to stand out (seeing as how there were only 3 other families in the branch). They just accepted us for who we are and never felt anyone was talking behind our back. They knew we were there to help and we were glad to do what we could. I’m gonna miss that. 

The next day we went to the Gilbert’s home to have a little FHE fun with badminton. Don’t worry, we never improved on our skills and still looked like complete morons while playing. It was wonderful. One day, we wanna be like the Gilberts. They were the most welcoming family I’ve met besides a few families I met while on my mission. They understood we were there for the summer and they were more than willing to be our surrogate family until we could return to our own. They were always so happy to have us over and play games and laugh with/at us. The kids were especially sweet as they told us multiple times how much they were going to miss us and didn’t want us to go. 

The next night, we thought we’d go to lamar valley just to see if we could find anything. Guess what we saw? Yup, a BLACK grizzly bear. It was pretty far off in the field and just walking along. We tried to get some good shots, but some are better than others. We heard someone saying something about wolves that were by Roosevelt (which we had passed on our way to see the grizzly. SHOOT! So we got in the car and drove back to see if the wolves were still hanging around. Apparently we just missed them as we drove up. One 16..yea 16 year old…kid whom we’ve seen every time we’ve been wolf watching told us that there was a bison carcass not too far off and they may be back tomorrow. I convinced Mike we needed to come back in the morning. Normally in the morning means around 8:00 or so, not so much when one is looking for wolves. Morning means 6:00 am. So we and our friend James woke up with the sun around 5:00am and left around 5:20 to be able to get out to Lamar by 6:00. James insisted that he was going to be angry if he didn’t see any wolves seeing as how he didn’t go to bed until around 1:00am. He was saying bye to a few friends and lost track of time. After we arrived, we were not disappointed. We saw a few wolves standing on the top of a hill and then walk down behind the ridge line. There was a heard of bison across the road and as mentioned in earlier blog posts, it’s rut. We saw the males slamming their heads together pushing each other back and forth. It was super cool. Mike missed it because he was crossing the road and saw the wolves hanging out in a field. We got lots of pictures and even got a video of them howling. One bison was crossing their path. One wolf started howling and then other’s joined in. The bison never stopped or faltered his steps. The wolves continued to howl and gathered together to look like one massive creature. Bison are known to have poor eye sight and I’m sure it looked like one HUGE wolf howling. The bison, however just continued on his path, as if to say, “ok, thanks for your howling.” The wolves continued to walk on keeping one eye on the wolf. One lone wolf stayed back and ran around the bison as if it was teasing it. The bison just did one big head movement and the wolf went flying in the air. Not really… but that would have been awesome. The bison did move its head like it was going to send the wolf flying, but the wolf was too fast and ran away. Don’t mess with these bison, especially during rut. 

Sun rise

That's the bear

Wolves from the "Molly Pack"

Howling at the pack

Same wolf still howling

The day before, we decided to go and see if we could go white water rafting. The problem was their last ride went out at 3:00 and we didn’t get off work until 5:00. Luckily we knew Kirby and Allison who were friends with the people at the Flying Pig. After we named dropped (never done that before) the worker said she’d go and see if anyone was going out the next night. The Lord really was looking out for us because one girl that happened to be there that day needed to get certified and was going that next night to do it. We set everything up for the next day. So after an awesome morning of watching wolves we went to work for a few hours and then went rafting for FREE. My favorite price. It’s ok to name drop every now and again. The girl that was getting certified was a crazy red head that before this summer had never had a tan. She was a blast and Mike and I, being the newbies, were required to ride in the front and get extra wet. Yellowstone river water, in case you didn’t know, is NEVER warm…EVER. It was fun despite the really cold water. I figured it being August; the water would be a little warm, nope. The water was low because it was late in the season, but I was grateful we even got to do it at all. I felt kinda hardcore rafting in the Yellowstone River with no helmet or water shoes.    

Our last full day we spent hiking Fairy falls. *Note to self: always wear HIKING shoes while HIKING* The hike wasn’t terrible, but the path was full of volcanic ash and therefor full of ash that would conceal the little rocks on the trail. Being clumsy and all, it’s always better to wear shoes that allow one to trip on rocks and not stub one’s toe….30 times. When we finally reached the falls, it was totally worth it. They were beautiful. Of course, I had to get in the water. Guess what? It was cold too…VERY COLD. Hence, the awkward poses in the photos:

This is Grand Prismatic. Notice the little yellow man in between the trees. That's Mike.

We ate lunch with our friends that night and said our goodbyes. We miss them terribly.

Until next post of our travels home.

a various cacophany of adventures and dehydration...

Timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr camp.

Lately we’ve been counting down the days until we go home. Not that we’re unhappy here or anything it’s just that we feel like we’ve accomplished almost everything we came up here to do. So, with that in mind we are attempting to polish off the last few things on our list of “to do’s.” One of those things was camping….not backpacking mind you but honest to goodness “car camping.” Our friends Amanda and Lori gently urged us to give the whole camping thing another shot so we did. We looked around for a good place to go. First we looked at locations inside the park but they’re all way too busy. Next we looked outside the park since the tourists generally only stay on the major roads and rarely camp inside the park the options outside the park are pretty much wide open and available. It didn’t take us long to find a place called Timber Camp outside the small town of Jardine which is outside the small town of Gardiner…it’s all about the series of small towns up here, but we love it. Anywho, last Sunday we (Jess, Amanda and myself ) went for a drive up to scope out the campsites that were available at this so called “Timber Camp.” It was basically a large forested area with an odd little meadow thrown in the middle. On one side of the meadow in the trees there was a small stream that ran through the camp. It was typical of what a mountain camp would look like. There were three campsites that we could choose from, one was closest to the stream and bathroom (it was really just a hole in the ground with some walls put around it), the second one was on a trail over to the horse corrals which were part of the camp but separated by some trees (with very few possible tent sites this one wasn’t really an option) and the third one was up by the road and was relatively small compared to the other two. We decided we would take the first one if it was available when we got there Friday night. On those in between days we (in this exact order) worked, worked, worked, climbed a mountain (Mount Washburn, 10,243 feet high to be exact, and worked. You read that right WE CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN!!! It was pretty awesome and difficult. It got really windy and pretty cold up on top of that mountain. When Friday finally came around we were ready for some more outdoor adventure. We had planned a gourmet meal of hot dogs and smores……..

Sorry to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming but we have a very important announcement to make. Uh hum…..we would like to announce…….we……went……swimming in the Firehole River and it was amazing. When you first climb into the river it’s frighteningly cold so you immediately begin to think the name is merely a clever coincidence that its name creates vivid pictures of a boiling tempest. It was actually somewhere around 70 degrees which wasn’t awful. As you can most likely guess it’s a river so there’s pretty strong current. If you decide to enjoy the Firehole river and all its wonders it should be a requirement that you have to at least push against the current to make it past the first set of cliffs and underwater barricades. Jess and I pushed our way all the way to the origin of the canyon where the current is the strongest and flung ourselves into the gaping jaws of the watery beast. It was pretty fun. The current pulled us under a couple times and threw me into a rock shelf but it was a blast. We both highly recommend it. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming……

Showing the elevation. Jess wanted to be a part of the picture too....

Not much air pressure up here!

This is three panoramic pictures put into one huge panorama.

This is for you, James

…….Thanks for that important news bulletin! We will now resume with our riveting tale of the Timber Camp experience. We painstakingly prepared our exquisite meal of hot dogs, brats and chips over the fire. It was a delicious gourmet experience that prompted our taste buds to explode with enthusiasm. After dinner we sat and talked around the campfire. Once we got too cold to stand it we all crawled into our respective tents and attempted to sleep in the freezing cold mountain air. It got down to something around 34 degrees that night which was not something I was expecting. The next morning we slowly got up and cooked breakfast, sausage and eggs. It was superb. Once we got moving we cleaned up camp and went for a short walk around our campsite just to see what else was out there. We didn’t miss much.  On our way back into town we stopped at an old mountain cemetery. It was pretty cool to see this little cemetery stuck on the only flat spot for 2 miles on the side of a mountain. That was our camping trip. No more, no less. In short, car camping is for us…backpacking , not so much.

This is the manged fox that pretty much came up to us as we were enjoying our delicious smores.

  

The Lord's Hands

Posing a question

On my mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter DaySaints, at some points, it would have been easy to complain about the situations I was in. One day I heard someone talking about seeing how the Lord had had a hand in their life. I decided to put it to the test. Every day I would write down how the Lord’s hand had played a part in my life that day. Guess what. I became optimistic about my mission and the people we were teaching. It’s been several years, but that same feeling has returned that I need to start writing down how I’ve seen the Lord’s hand in my day to day life. I also felt I should pose the question to our 3 readers out there. I will not pose this question every week, but I may pose it when I’ve had a hard week, or a GREAT week, or a week like this week…just a good regular week. I do it to help myself see (and you 3 readers out there) how much the Lord really does have His hand in our everyday life. 

I’ll go first. I saw the Lord’s hand this week when on my birthday, I saw a TON of animals that I wanted to see, family came to visit Mike and I, and when I was preparing a talk on Sunday, He helped me with inspiration to know what to say. 

Now it’s your turn...if you wanna.

How have you seen the Lord’s hand in your life this week?