Mammoth Hot "Springs" and TWO BEARS

After our bear sighting, we were so filled with enthusiasm and spunk that we decided to get out the door SUPER early the next morning. We had heard repeatedly that dawn and dusk are the best times to spot animals, so we drummed up support to drive to Lamar Valley first thing in the morning and see some more wildlife! ("Maybe we'll see wolves! Ow ow owwwoooo!")

To our dismay, it turns out that 7 a.m. does not count as dawn. Not even close. Now that we're home and have access to internets, it turns out that sunrise at Yellowstone (today) was at 5:36 a.m. and dawn was at 4:59 a.m. Plus we didn't check ahead of time that the road to Lamar Valley (through Dunraven Pass) would be open. It wasn't. Seriously stupid.

Should. Have. Gone. With. Dusk.

So instead, we drove, all sleepy-eyed, out to the opposite corner of Yellowstone, the Mammoth Hot Springs area. I remember telling Kasandra that while Eric Hutchinson, Jack Johnson, and Jason Mraz were all very nice, her mellow-licious iPod was not going to cut it that morning (no offense).

I've wanted to see Mammoth Hot Springs ever since I wrote my science report about Yellowstone National Park in sixth grade. If you search for pictures of Mammoth Hot Springs online, you'll see lovely photos of colorful, delicate, glistening mineral formations. I spent the long drive hyping this up to my slightly-cranky and sleep-deprived family. Imagine my disappointment, when I found out that the springs have been dry for quite some time now!

But all was not lost. Some of the springs still had water. Here's one with a pretty bacterial mat, which I touched despite the copious "do not touch" signs. (Rest assured, I made sure a little boy dipped his hand in first, to make sure it was safe.)

Once again, however, we saw the best stuff last.

For lunch, we were seriously sick of lodge cafeteria food, so we drove out to Gardiner, MT, to see what we could find. One of the locals recommended that we try the Cowboy Lodge and Grill, which just opened up last week and served delicious BBQ (the real kind, with a smoker).

After lunch, as you might expect, everyone had major food coma. But just when we least expected it, on the road between Mammoth Hot Springs and Roosevelt-Tower, we saw TWO MORE BEARS!! And a bighorn sheep!

Then, ironically enough, we finally made it to Lamar Valley and saw no animals. (Well, no animals except buffalo, which we'd seen plenty of already.) But the valley was very pretty!

We drove home via the now-open Dunraven Pass (it opened at 9 a.m., go figure), and had dinner at the Fishing Bridge cafeteria (more burgers and hot dogs...uh, yum).

I digress now to discuss the following depressing display at the gift shop.

Mugs for kiddies. When I was growing up, I could never find my name, because it was so popular that it always ran out. And now, I can't get one because nobody is naming baby girls Jennifer anymore. All the trendy names, like Jaden, McKenzie, etc. were there, but no Jennifer! I realized with horror what was happening.

I'm going to be the Gertrude of the 80s.

According to babynameshub.com:

Girls Named Jennifer

This chart illustrates how many Girls were named Jennifer in the U.S. since 1880.

On that note, we all went to bed at 8:30 p.m., well before official dusk at 9:42 p.m.

West Thumb, Old Faithful and a BEAR

The road to the Old Faithful and other nearby basins opened up on our third day, so we saw lots of geysers and hot springs, and breathed in lots of delicious sulfuric steam. ("Mmm, smells like Taiwan!")

West Thumb

I think I was most impressed not by geysers going off, but by the bright, vivid, colors of the pools and their "bacterial mats". Apparently you can tell the temperature of the water by the colors of the "extremophiles" that live in it. (Warmer colors mean warmer water, cooler colors mean cooler water.)

Here are a couple nice colorful pools from West Thumb:

Old Faithful

Here's the obligatory picture with Old Faithful! (And various other Asian tourists...there were a LOT of Asians out there.)

And here's a couple more neat ones from the Old Faithful Basin:

We wanted to hike a longer loop around the Old Faithful area, but it was super cold and about half our group looked sort of sad and shivery when we suggested a longer walk, so we moved on to other basins.

Unfortunately, the weather was too cold for the hot springs too. I was super excited to see the Grand Prismatic Spring.

But there was too much steam coming off the water to see anything. :-(

Our next spot, Artists' Paint Pots, however, was a cool-looking surprise.

And we were really pumped to see a black bear in Hayden Valley on the way back home!

Curse my feeble 3x zoom, but I'm sure Kally and Kasandra will have some awesome ones to share later!

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

On our first full day, all the roads were still closed, except the road to the Canyon area. We got some nice views of the canyon.

But we ran out of luck by the time we came to Inspiration Point:

When it started snowing again, everyone in the park crammed into the Canyon diner, where we eagerly nommed some cheeseburgers after a long wait. Little did we know how sick we would get of diner food, but that first burger was good at least.

Later, we stopped by the Mud Volcano area, where the conversation was mostly dominated by talk of cooking eggs. Hmm...I wonder why.

We loved this picture warning us to stay on the boardwalk. Onoes, it's Tommy again!

For dinner, we ate at the fancy Lake Lodge Restaurant. Chris had a bison steak, which was delicious, although the grownups didn't like their duck so much.

While we waited for dinner (outside the restaurant), we taught everyone how to play poker, with a grand pot of $7 for the winner. Chris and I learned an important lesson, which is not to bet against Tiffany. Tiffany managed to wipe everyone out without ever making a bet or a raise, if you can believe that. We realized waaaay too late that her simply calling a bet meant she probably had the winning hand.

After dinner, my cousins made us surprise visitors! Cute!

Sometimes the Snow Comes Down in June

There are basically two routes from Salt Lake City to Yellowstone:

• Through Idaho on I-15.
• Through Wyoming and the Tetons on various smaller highways.

I'd been planning for months to use the latter route (I mean, what's interesting in Idaho right?), but for whatever reason, we changed our minds at the last minute and went through Idaho, to the west entrance of the park.

This was possibly the best decision of the trip. First, we got to see a herd of buffalo on the road! With baby buffaloes too! The ranger had just given us a scary cartoon of a visitor being gored by a buffalo ("uh oh, that looks like Tommy!"), so we were too chicken to roll down the windows.

But the real advantage of choosing I-15 was that the snow started coming down hard. And all three of the other park entrances (south, east, and north) were completely closed. Chris and I were worried that we would (once again) get caught in the snow with a lousy two-wheel-drive car and no chains.

Mom, inexplicably, was worried that we didn't have a compass.

Best Music of the Drive:

• Vivaldi's Four Seasons. (Jenn: "Oh Winter is perfect for this weather; it sounds just like a snowstorm." Chris: "Um, this is Summer.")
• I'm on a Boat! (AWWW SHIT! My parents and my brother had apparently never heard this before.)

When we finally arrived at the Lake Lodge, after a couple tense hours of driving in the dark in with juusssst-almost-too-deep snow, we found that our peril wasn't over. Apparently Uncle and Ayi had endured hours of puppy-dog-eye treatment from the lodge staff and stranded visitors, who wanted to use our room for the night, since nobody believed we could enter the park.

It's crazy to be reminded how difficult it is to figure out simple things like meeting up without cell reception!

Best comment of the night: "You weren't expecting to see snow when you got dressed this morning, were you." --Stranger, chuckling about my shorts and flip flops.

Most depressing comment: "Who's Vanessa Williams?" --My cousins, who have never heard 'Save the Best for Last' before. 1991 wasn't THAT long ago, was it?

Family Reunion in Yellowstone

Whew! Just finished posting pictures from our week-long family reunion in Yellowstone!

Yellowstone

It took a while to get Picasa face tagging to work, but I figured it was worth it to be able to filter out all the random shots of buffalo butts and steaming holes of water (pretty as they are).

I think this was the first time all twelve of us have gotten together since our wedding in 2006, so it was super exciting that everyone's schedules lined up for this trip! Who knows when we'll ever get a chance to do this again, so I'm just going to jot down some highlights to remember the trip by. I'll split it up day by day, since it's really painful to make gigantic posts in Blogger.

But first some stats!

We were lucky enough to spot 15 of Yellowstone's awesome animals. Credits, in order of appearance:

• Buffalo
• Elk (a.k.a. Kally's 'white-tailed deer')
• Duck
• Crane
• Canada goose (boring)
• Black bear (three times!)
• Bighorn sheep
• Coyote
• Wolf (black and grey, eating coyote pups!)
• Sage Ruffed grouse (a.k.a. 'Snurkey')
• Marmot
• Moose
• Pelican
• Bald eagle
• Beaver

My family also loves to take pictures with all combinations of people. We were curious how many combinations of 12 people there actually are, and here's the answer.

Number of People	Combinations
1	12
2	66
3	220
4	495
5	792
6	924
7	792
8	495
9	220
10	66
11	12
12	1

Total number of people combinations for photos: 4095

I took a total of 599 pictures (most of which consisted of buffalo butts and holes of steaming water), so I bet we didn't even come close to getting all the combos. Goal for next time, haha.

We also drove a LOT in our two minivans. Our little white Chrysler Town & Country went through 4 states and a total of 1,534 miles.