Tuesday, August 18, 2009

An end to a perfect summer...






























We just got back from Wyoming on Friday and had the best time with our car trip. We haven't taken a car trip in years and Wendy has never been on one like this. The longest she has been in a car has been 6 hours to visit grandparents and her older sister, but this was a two day trip to get there. We decided to take off and go to Yellowstone National Park. Old Faithful wasn't faithful to being on time! It was 15 minutes late and didn't go off as high as it use to from what we could tell.
The one thing we enjoyed the most was hiking and seeing animals there. There was a lot of road work so to trek back to the Grand Tetons was impossible. If and when we go back we will just do the Grand Tetons so we can see thing we didn't get to on this trip.

As far as animals go we saw Bison on the first day in. One came right out of the trees in front of our car. I had to come to a quick stop so he could cross. He was hobbling so he had been hit sometime before; poor thing. He met up with his friend on the other side that decided he had to roll in the dirt at that moment. That was one of the highlights of the trip. Mike and I took a walk from our cabin one evening while the girls played with Lincoln logs in our room. While down by the Snake River Mike cast a few times hoping to catch a trout. Unfortunately they were feeding way on the other side of the river. I had strolled do to this sandy area where the river rocks had cleared...there were all kinds of tracks and scat (poop). You won't believe what tracks I found!! First of all I found Moose tracks, and some kind of small sandpiper type bird tracks, and then wolf along with it's scat. The biggest tracks I found were BEAR!!! We kept our eyes peeled believe me!

The next morning Mike decided he wanted to go back to the river to fish again, this was around 6:30 am and he waded out to the middle of the river where we had seen them feeding the night before. I got to worrying some since it was nearly 8:00 am and we had plans to go down to some water falls 23 miles away. Finally he came to the door and I opened it and in his hands he had the most beautiful brown trout I've ever seen. It was 22 inches long and around 4 lbs. It was a nice fish! He told me he had also caught a small cut throat trout that was pretty, but not as much as this one.

You know that when you are in the mountains the elevation can get to you if you try to walk too fast up steep inclines...so we took it slow and easy and still found our selves having trouble. Not to mention when something is 23 miles away you think oh, that isn't all that far. ha With winding roads and a slow speed limit due to animals it took quite a while to get places. I went slow because I know we would see more animals, and we did! More Bison, Elk, Mule Deer, and on our way home I saw the back end of a Black Bear. No one but Mike believes me. We stopped and ran to see if we could get a photo of it, but he had moved on into the trees. I don't have proof. ha

We really liked Cody, Wyoming from what we could see of the town while driving through. Like an old west town.

We stayed the night in Casper on the way back home and picked up a souvenir for Holly there, she bought herself a Canadian Ferret and named him Huckleberry. We were told that they get big and he is 4 months now and as big as our big boy Bear is now. Bear is full grown for his breed and won't get any bigger, but the guy told us that he had a Canadian Ferret that got to be 22 lbs.!! I don't think Huckleberry will get that big but will maybe reach 9 lbs. and that is big! He is named after the fruit there in Yellowstone. I'll see if I can get a photo of the stinker if he can slow down enough to do so.

Enjoy the photos! Sorry they aren't in order.

Lesa