Carey Family

Scott

Grizzlies and Wolves

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Since it’s nigh unto impossible to see grizzlies or wolves in the park, (although various Playmill actors have seen both this summer), we took a little trip to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, Montana.  It’s actually an impressive facility where injured animals or animals that can’t survive in the wild are able to live out their lives.  One of the programs there reads like this:

Keeper Kids – Join us for an exciting activity especially designed for kids ages 5-12. In this unique program, kids first learn about grizzly bear eating habits and then accompany the naturalist and animal keeper into the bear habitat to hide food for some of our resident bears. After the food is hidden, kids get to learn how bears use their sense of smell to search out food.

So the kids go in the enclosure, hide the food, then watch the bears digging all over to find their food.  It was fun to watch the bears turning over rocks and logs and fun to watch the kids exclaim when a bear found the food they had hidden.  I should mention that at no time were there grizzlies and children in the enclosure at the same time.  In case you were wondering.

The center has two wolf packs with different Alpha wolves and the walkways are quite close to the enclosures so we got some great close-up views.

this owl kept turning his head around in that funny way owls do

Brian took our picture on the bear couch in the gift shop.  Evidently it’s the thing to do because everyone was getting their picture taken there.

Mammoth Hot Springs

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Mammoth Hot Springs is a far drive north from the west entrance to the park at West Yellowstone, Montana.  We drove and drove and got stuck in traffic jams and by the time we got there, we didn’t have much time to see it.  Mammoth has a thriving community of hotels, restaurants, and shops as well as a resident elk herd that beds down in the middle of the intersection, along with its own signs and rangers to watch over it.

The springs were huge, so I guess that’s why their name is Mammoth, and there are boardwalks all over the place.  We walked around a little of it and climbed to the top of one plateau, but there’s a lot to see there.  All the thermal stuff is so interesting in Yellowstone.

Geysers and Falls

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While we were visiting Yellowstone, we went into the park each day, but had to get Brian back early for his theater call times.  There is more driving from place to place in YNP than we anticipated, so we spent a lot of time traveling each day and then didn’t have much time to see stuff once we got there.  Especially when there were daily traffic jams due to bison near the road.  So we did a “power tour” and tried to see the high points, or what we could get to easily.

Sue & Brian at the Lower Geyser Basin

It was an overcast day but still warm and quite windy when we walked around the basin.  We saw the mud pots and some geysers going off.  Scott and I walked this area on May 1 during our quick jaunt after dropping off Brian and the pots were more liquid and bubbling like crazy.  The sign said they are more active in spring than the rest of the year and it was true.  They were much thicker and more like bubbling mud in July.  Interesting.  Also there were more people.

Scott at the Brink of the Lower Falls

We hiked straight down on the North Rim to the Brink of the Lower Falls.  The trail takes you right to where the water rushes over and it was awesome and powerful!

Brian and Sue at the Brink of the Lower Falls

Scott took a picture of me gazing into the water because I love all things water and moving water is the best!  I suggested we take a US tour of all the famous waterfalls in the country so I could bask in the views, but Scott didn’t take the bait.  (I was organizing photos recently and found that we actually have quite a few photos of me that look similar to this. 😉 )

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
view of the Upper Falls

After all this awesome viewing we had to climb the trail straight back up.  It’s a higher elevation than our mountain home.  Brian was breathing normally, Scott was huffing some, and I had to keep stopping because I thought my heart was going to pound out of my chest.  No, I am not in as good a shape as when Scott and I did all that hiking three years ago.  Pity, because that was a steep trail!

2 years old!

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One year ago, Scott & I participated in a miracle by attending Aaron’s one year party and releasing balloons in memory of all the Trisomy 18 babies not fortunate enough to have made it to that milestone. Well, last night we released 4 balloons, one for each of us in our family, at Aaron’s second birthday party. What a miracle! You can see lots of photos at the mom’s blog  and you can play “Where’s Waldo?” to find the photo of my back.

Vertical garden structure-hooray!

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I’ve been wanting vertical structures for the vegetable garden for a long time and it’s just never happened, so today we were out weeding and planting some more veggies and I mentioned that Scott should lash together a structure for the cucumbers before we plant them and he just did it!  Such an awesome husband!  He went to the woodpile and a few minutes later all those mad Scout skills had made a cucumber teepee.  Will it work?  Stay tuned.  But we have verticality in the vegetables!  Wah-hoo!