Strictly Business, Part 2

 On our way home from Utah, we decided to take a detour....can you guess where the three of us went?

Yup, Yellowstone, home of steamy geysers and spectacular colors

and visual reminders of what will happen if you forget to clean out your tub.

Megan was wanting to bottle the sulfur smell and bring it home.

We haven't been through Yellowstone since Megan was a toddler. We had forgotten how beautiful it is.

We came to this large drop-off and could see dozens of hats at the bottom. I thought they had blown off of people's heads in this windy area and become unreachable, but Megan said this is a Yellowstone tradition-- you throw your hat into the pool, like money in a water fountain at the mall.  Hmmm.

I'm going to have Stan add this water feature to our backyard.

We passed this sign several times, warning us not to touch the water in the area because it is surprisingly hot...

...which explains why Megan is touching this water, which is surprisingly hot.

We saw plenty of wildlife in the park, including this elk. If you look closely to the left of the elk, you can see a second elk hiding in the grass. We figured it was a mom and baby.

We were wrong--it is just a couple of elk buddies out for a stroll.

Of course, no trip to Yellowstone is complete without a visit to Old Faithful

 which we were told was set to go off in 10 to 20 minutes.

So we settled in and waited

 and waited

and waited.

Finally, 24 minutes beyond the last projected time, we got some action. Let's just say Old Faithful is really Old Semi-Faithful.

Megan contemplated taking a little dive

but once again, there were signs reminding you not to trip. You know you're in trouble when you have to be reminded not to do face-plants. Naturally, Megan ignored the signage and tripped away....

Watch out, Megan! It's a looooong way down!

Stan and Megan forgot to send me the memo about what we were wearing today. 

I wore green and blue. 

 How embarrassing.

 

This is a great year for travel in the West. Everything is so green (or yellow and purple) with all of the rain we've been having.

And yes, it rained.

Good thing--it takes a lot of water to run these things.

"The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone"

 Good news--Megan found the perfect chair for her dorm room.

 We stopped to view the grizzly down here. What? You don't see it??? Trust me, he's down there---there were 217 people lining the top of this cliff watching him.

This is the waterfall that used to have an enormous boulder sitting at the top of the falls. At some point during the stone age, when we were kids, it fell.

As we left the park, we passed a huge herd of buffalo. 

We figured there were 500-600 buffalo in this valley.

It wasn't long before we were back in Montana. We knew we were near home when we saw all the snow.  The route out of Yellowstone goes through Cook City Pass.

This is my least favorite road in Montana--the sign at the top says "Speed Limit 70", but the path is down an incredibly steep mountain with a series of tight hairpin turns on a narrow road.  You're lucky if you can negotiate the road at more than 20 mph. When you get to the bottom, and the road straightens out, the speed limit drops to 60. I love Montana logic.