DARWIN is on his 12th year of teaching, currently at Springville High School teaching astronomy, geology, environmental science, and physics. He also teaches physics at UVU for a 7 week STEM summer school program for junior high students. He also teaches teenagers in our church ward. He's super busy, but still makes time to be an awesome dad and husband.Sunday: We drove up to my G-ma's house after church to sleep so we could leave early the next morning to drive into Yellowstone. I've been going to my grandma's house several times a year since I was little, but we got lost twice on the way up there...I guess I'm not used to going up in the dark, but thanks to my dad for being able to talk me back to where I needed to be, we made it to Grandma's safely and still in pretty good time :)
Monday: We hit some of our favorite spots in Yellowstone, like Old Faithful. We set up camp, and then headed up to Mammoth Hot Springs. Part of the road was closed, so we couldn't get to Mammoth from West Yellowstone. Instead, we had to go all the way around the bottom loop, and then all the way around the northern loop to get there. It was totally fun though...we stopped at other places along the way too. Neither one of us had been to Mammoth Hot Springs before, but my grandfather used to work there, so it was fun to go and see his old stomping grounds. On our way back to camp we stopped at Norris Geyser Basin, but decided we'll need to go back there again because it was getting dark at that point so we didn't get to see all that we wanted to.
I found these sweet moose hats at one of the gift shops by Old Faithful. And you know how much I love moose!
Driving out to Mammoth Hot Springs we saw these cool rocks. (D says: " This is a basaltic lava flow that is now showing columnar jointing. As a bed of lava cools, it contracts and breaks in near hexagonal columns. I just had to stop and get a picture.")
(D says: "You can see the lava flow and the columnar jointing from across the valley. It's apparent thickness is about 20-25 feet thick. We can see that Yellowstone was and still is a very volcanic place.")
Us at Old Faithful
A petrified redwood tree. (D says: "Petrification here has occurred when a ton of ash has been blown out of a volcano and covers the tree before it can decompose. In this case, the tree was still standing when buried. Then little minerals filled in and replace the organic material of the tree making a rock that looks like a tree.")
Watch out for buffalo on the roads...a common sight in some parts of Yellowstone
This was not zoomed in...he really was that close to our car!
Mammoth Hot Springs
Norris Geyser Basin
If you click to enlarge the picture, you can see the stars :)
Tuesday: We woke up after sleeping so well in our new cozy sleeping bags! The temp. was about 30 degrees, but we were warm all night long and both of us slept really well. D made us a delicious breakfast of bacon, eggs, and hot chocolate. Once we got all of our stuff packed back into our car, we did a little bit more touring around Yellowstone before driving down to the Tetons.Our campsite
This elk was huge!! Traffic wasn't moving very fast because everyone was trying to get pictures of him. We weren't exactly sure what they were looking at, so I jumped out of the car and snapped a couple of pictures before running back to the car, and catching up with D before traffic started moving again. Smooth moves :)
This was the view from Inspiration Point in Yellowstone. You can see the lower falls of the Yellowstone river at the top of the picture.
After going to Inspiration Point, we hiked down to the lower falls.
There were about 328 stairs we had to climb down and then back up!
We couldn't believe how close those people were standing to a buffalo. They can charge you pretty quickly! Brave souls.
Teton National ParkAfter we were done in Yellowstone, we drove down to Teton National Park. This is the view of Jackson Lake with the Tetons in the background.
The sun was in my eyes...what can I say?
This landscape was formed from glaciers passing through the area, so of course we had to take a picture ;) (D says: "The curved line of trees on the left in the picture probably runs along a terminal moraine or end of a glacier where it plows the soil as it grows. Then it melts, shrinks, and exposes the curved moraine. The little lake and the depression to the left of it are called kettles. This is where chunks of glaciers have broken off and made the depression on the ground.")
Beautiful Tetons
We brought all of our food with us, so we had to make a fire each night to make our dinner. While we were at Teton, D got a bit too close to the fire and singed his arm hair! It was a close one!
This mama and baby moose were hanging out about 100 yards away from where we were cooking our dinner. It TOTALLY made my vacation. We had been looking for moose or bears since we got there, and finally saw some moose. We never saw any bears though.
Wednesday: Was the last day of our vacation. We tried to get up a little bit early so we could hike to the Tetons Inspiration Point before driving the 7-ish hours back home and not get home too late. I was glad we decided to do the hike. It was totally fun!Our cozy little over-priced cabin we stayed in at Teton. We thought it would be fun and cozy for our anniversary trip, but turned out to be not-so-romantic because there was a gap between our room and the room next to us...big enough that we could see into the next room! So much for romance! ;)
We didn't see any bears on our hike up to Inspiration Point by Jenny Lake (about a 6 mile round-trip hike), but we did see some other fierce animals! ;)
This part of the trail was a bit nerve-racking, so we had to take a picture of it.
The chipmunks were relentless and there were tons of them! This one sat in this position for about a minute until D took the picture, then he finally moved. The little poser!
This little guy is called a pika. They're related to rabbits, but they have teeny little ears. On our hike back we saw one dragging a small tree branch up the trail!
On our hike back down we stopped at Hidden Falls. It was our last stop before heading home. The whole area is beautiful! We had a wonderful time together!
We got home Wednesday night, and D went back to work on Thursday to get ready for students to return this coming Wednesday. I also start school again this coming Wednesday, so it's time to get our noses back to the grindstone. So long sweet summer!(P.S. D & I both got 4.0 gpa's again for summer semester! Yay us!!)
