Yellowstone

We spent a wonderful, long weekend at Yellowstone on June 5th through the 8th.  With only a few days of notice, we were invited to stay at Dr. John Covey's "cabin" in West Yellowstone. I made the mistake of trusting to Google Maps' directions and we ended up driving about 20 miles out of the way on rough, skinny dirt roads on the outskirts of West Yellowstone. At about midnight on Friday night we finally managed to find the huge, 3 story, 40 bunk, beautifully furnished home. We slept in on Saturday then headed in to the park. It had been a dozen years since I'd been to Yellowstone and Julie had never been. We spent the day hiking among the hot pools, geysers, mud pots, and steam vents. The kids loved seeing Old Faithful.

The next morning we awoke late to find quite a surprise, about an inch of snow on the ground with it still coming down hard. We listened to Christmas music as we drove back into the park. The snow made the younger pines along the miles to our first hike of the day look like fields of Christmas trees. The buffalo grazed in fields with 3-4 inches of snow on the grass and on their backs. We hiked about a mile in to some hot springs while it still snowed.

We spent a few hours checking out various hot springs until the Park Rangers opened up the roads that they had closed for the snow and we went to see Yellowstone Canyon. The waterfalls were beautiful and the run-off from the melting snow created small waterfalls running down the canyon walls to join the huge ones created by the Yellowstone river.

We went to bed early and slept in late, cleaned the house, and came home on Monday. It was an unforgettable trip.