More Vacation pictures AND a P.S. announcement:

We visited the Wolf and Grizzly Bear Haven. We were lucky enough to see them testing containers for "bear-proofness".

This is our one family picture for the whole trip.

We visited the lower loop area (entrance until Old Faithful... no high elevations). Just a pretty and calm day. We even got to see an Elk calf up close.

Yes, that is Old Faithful out the window.

Then it was off to Jellystone via the Virginia City "old cowboy town". It was interesting. But the kids liked the candy shop the most... they were like "kids in a candy shop"... touching everything. The Taffy puller was entrancing however.

It was neat that some of the "stores" had been kept exactly as they appeared when they closed in the 1800s!

Jellystone, the camp ground...

No, the boys aren't trying to hide from getting their picture taken (this time), but rather the sun was in their eyes. There are great big "Cheese" smiles under their hands, honestly!

More still to come.... the day we spent in Missoula, all of Moses Lake, random landscape shots, and best of the boys shots. It just takes time.

***P.S. *****This Monday, despite all good intentions of getting to the park early for a cooler fun time... I ended up in the ER for pain on my left side. Turns out I have a 3mm kidney stone pretty high up. I'm suppose to go to see the urologist in a few days/week to see if the stone has moved, if yes, then just more waiting while on pain meds. If no....maybe a "procedure" of some TBDetermined sort. In the meantime, I'm watching out for fever, which is Really bad and in the event of one I'd have to return to the ER pronto, I'm taking pain meds, taking anti-nausea meds, and "Flomax" (wow, doesn't that sound like a high performance muffler?!).

Thank you to Mike for taking the day off work to drive me to the ER, and to Grammy and Papa Dahl for watching the kids today and taking Caleb overnight and Joshy on Tuesday so that I can rest. I'm not allowed to drive with the pain meds and judging by the pain, I'll be on quantities that are more than a mere trifle until this bugger passes. So Thank you for all your help.

The next sequence of pictures (mid Tuesday 17th through Wednes. 18th)

We, of course, visited Old Faithful. While the boys didn't exactly grasp the concept of what we were waiting around for, they did relish the delicious treat of ice cream eaten on the veranda after the eruption.

These are some of the first Elk we encountered. The small group was on the side of the road in a pass. The heard was in a meadow off to the side just after we visited Yellowstone Lake/lodge area. You may not be able to tell from the pictures, but we were really quite close... 300-400 feet. Then, of course, the piece-de-resistance (in Mike's mind), Bulk Elk in Velvet, which we were 30-45 feet away from.

Continuing on the lower loop of Yellowstone... I didn't get out of the car much, except for stomach issues, at the Mud Volcanoes. Ask Mike for pictures of those. But I did brave getting out of the car for the once in a lifetime opportunity to see the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. A sight of beauty, truly. (to which , I added my own flare creativity with digestive activity.)

This closed the 17th.

On to the 18th with our second trip into the park. We did the upper loop, most notable among the sights is Mammoth with it's Liberty Cap and the only two rams we saw.

Mammoth really was the cutest "town" in the whole park.

The other "event" in Mammoth was Caleb's allergic reaction... how's this for a sight?! And this is just two views, later that night, he hived from Head-to-Toe!

Also, this day we visited the Canyon Village visitor center and gift shop. If you get the impression that the boys touched everything in sight, you'd be very correct!

So that is it for this post.... and still more to come later!

Ok... PICTURES....

1&2 the FIRST tire that blew and the damage to the side of the trailer

3&4 The Lewis and Clark Caverns...

5&6 The first two animals we saw in the park... A HUGE Eagle's Nest and a Coyote.

7,8,9, 10 Just some of the buffalo from our first day in the park. Yes, those golden brown/rust ones are CALVES! Cute. And a picture to show how close you can get to a buffalo without them paying any heed to your actions at all. (Actually we drove within 6' of one while passing him on the road.)

11-16 The Paint pots in the Lower Geyser Basin... basically hot pools of bubbling/shooting water. Beautiful colors. The last was a picture of a sign that I thought had the funniest face in the bubbling mud.

So that was from Saturday(14th) through half of Tuesday(17th)... more to come later. (Blogger is taking forever to load pictures).