Friday, May 30, 2014

Trip #2 ... Yellowstone

So we will be having quite a few vacations this summer due to having extra before classes start in less than a month.  It has been wonderful having so much time with Jonny.  On a spur moment, we decided to go to Yellowstone.  We camped there for 2 nights and were visiting the sites for about 2 1/2 days.  We managed to fit just about everything in to those 2 days.  It was a blast!  It was Jonny's first time and he was really impressed.  It was a great little get-away.


This is beehive geyser above.  Oh, it was SO cool!  We just happened to be walking by it when it went off.  We overhead some people sitting by it that it only goes off every 12-15 hours and they had already been waiting for a couple hours just to watch it go off.  It was so awesome!  It was a super tall one and the boardwalk was close enough that the water landed right on it!  There were a couple people walking through the falling water of the geyser.  This was definitely a lucky highlight from the trip.




We tried making homemade little peach pies.  They turned out alright, but it was a lot of fun to make.


The buffalo were EVERYWHERE.  Well, that is a little exaggeration, but they were always near our campsite.  We had only to walk 5 minutes and we could always find some.  There was never a day where they didn't blocked the road while we were driving.  When we passed, we drove within arms distance of them.  That was more than a little scary.  Those horns are MASSIVE and so are they!





This is a sweet coyote that we also were lucky enough to see every night.  I think that was really unusual.  We only ever saw him for a minute or two before he disappeared again.  The first night he was running on the road right next to our car!  That was pretty sweet.


We actually loved all the driving that we did around the park.  It was such a diverse and beautiful park. This particular road had snow all along it.  There were places where there was a 10 foot wall along the side of the road!  It felt like a winter wonderland.







Yeah, I didn't do so well with the stinky hot pots.  The smell of rotten eggs makes me sick!


Yellowstone Lake was massive!  It was crazy to see so much of it was frozen too!  Our campsite was on a little bit warmer side of the park so it only got down to the mid-30's at night.  During the day it was around 70-80ish.  It was kind of mind-blowing to see such a massive lake frozen.





Lots of pancake attempts and cool whip to cover up the burnt-ness.  We couldn't get our awesome little coleman stove to do anything but FLAMIN HOT because the propane tanks were full.  It was a fun attempt though!







Just starting to rain.  Thankfully it passed.  Our campsite had some awful winds though and two trees fell down.  They nearly smashed a couple tents.  Really grateful that they weren't ours!



Elk!  Right by the road!


This is the area right by our campsite.  Jonny and I went down to the river to sit and put our feet in to the water.  We got up to leave and I heard some crunching behind us.  I figured it was a another camper since it was a popular spot for people to walk around.  I turned to say hi and it was a massive buffalo!  Not 15 feet from us!  Scared the living daylights out of me.



Thursday, May 1, 2014

Trip #1 ... Oregon

This trip was a blast.  It was great to be out of school and go visit family.  We even got to go see Jonny's grandparents down in Eureka, CA.  It was a great trip.  Here are a couple of highlights from the trip.