this is my 34th post about our trip

well, maybe not the 34th, but i have neglected my house, my kids a smidge, and a lot of my 'me' time tonight (ha!) to put all of these silly posts up and they are totally out of order and that makes me a little crazy, so just let it be known that i would like for the post titled- jackson hole! yay!- to be the one you saw first, but alas, it is not, and this is a run-on sentence, so enjoy the recap of our trip. the end.

hiking around jenny lake

the weather predictions weren't great for the last day we were there, but we had put off hiking hoping for good weather. we determined to hike- rain or shine. well, it rained! but we had a really good time. due to the weather, we rode the ferry across the jenny lake (jenny o, it was named after you! :) if you even read this- ha!) instead of hiking around it. it was windy and cold.

once we arrived on the other side, someone mentioned that there was a moose near a creek, so we decided to go check it out. thankfully, we had these bear bells that chet found for us, that i LOVED! (and we were armed with bear spray, this huge fire-extinguisher sized pepper spray for bears, and we were armed with the knowledge of what to do in case of a bear attack...grizzy OR black bear, which is what put the fear in me and confirmed the purchase of the bear spray and bear bells. anyway...) these clever bells come in a pouch so that they don't jingle all of the time, only when you are hiking so any large wildlife, a bear, a moose, what have you, is not surprised by your presence and compelled to ATTACK! i joked that i am not quiet enough to startle anything, that a bear would hear me coming, for sure. i did not, however, take into account the elevation, and lack of talking due to the gasping for oxygen. so THANKS, CHET! they worked. all of the bears were well aware of our presence (along with the many other hikers we crossed paths with. :) ) oh, we didn't see a moose. he was probably bothered by our jingling and moved on. we learned that moose are very elusive.

we had planned to hike to hidden falls, and then to inspiration point, and then see how we were feeling from there. we arrived at this waterfall, and took lots of pictures. it was so pretty and the water was just gushing! this is really a neat season to see everything because of all of the melt-off from the snow. i am way up there on the bridge. it was so pretty!

we kept going, and we came upon another larger beautiful waterfall. i had thought that the first one was hidden falls, but i was wrong. this was it! :)

some nice people took our picture.

then it seemed like we hiked for-eva! (now, mind you i am not a wimpy hiker. we really enjoy hiking around our north carolina mountains, and i am in better shape than i have been in a long time- thanks, the shred!- but i was struggling! and wishing that i had the granola bar or trail mix that we left in the car. we were trying to be bear aware! and i thought that peanuts would smell extra yummy to a bear whether we were wearing jingle bells or not, so we opted not to bring the food. what's that they say about hindsight? ) anyway, i was feeling puny, but we finally arrived at this beautiful spot...

a pre-teen named riley offered to take our picture. he was on a trip with his grandparents from mississippi, and he was "really good with cameras" so, we let him and i think he did a pretty good job!

so pretty. i asked how much further joel planned to go, and he said he would like to at least hike to inspiration point. what?! this 'point' wasn't inspiration point? goodness! so we kept on. i was remembering the t-shirt that we chuckled at the day before that said "my lungs hurt- jackson hole, wy" only it was truer than it was funny at this point.

hiking further up... it was really so pretty!

and finally, inspiration point! beautiful!

joel being inspired...

we went a little further, and then hiked down. it eventually stopped sprinkling and warmed up some. it was just a great time. i really enjoy hiking with joel and am ready to go back and hike even further up to lake solitude. :)

here is the view riding the ferry back, inspiration point is the lighter colored part just above the treetops. it doesn't look like much from this view! :)

can you handle another post?

we rode a tram up to the top of the mountain that was in our backyard. the tram holds up to 100 people and moves pretty quickly. you can hike around up on the top, or ski down in the winter. (or bike down if you have a death wish, or paraglide down, if you also have a death wish) it was so pretty from way up high! here is the trip up...

the view...

at the top. it started snowing! i started to regret my shoe choice! i opted for my cute, comfy, treadless (sockless) shoes for shopping around jackson. oh well! :)

the snake river ... and the valley...

thankfully, they had ski poles for sillies like me wearing cute shoes (with snow in them).

it was up joel's knees in places...

the other side of the mountain. i loved getting to do this! thanks, joel! :)

yellowstone

we went to yellowstone on tuesday. it was our best weather day. we loved it! a couple of days before we went, they closed the south entrance to the park because there was so much snow! there was snow everywhere, it was really pretty!

lewis falls, i think. thanks lewis and clark for finding it for us! :)

waiting for old faithful. i really had no idea what to expect. it was very exciting. as steam started to really rise, there were lots of ooohs and ahhs.

it did this for a while. little bursts of water would shoot up. more ooohs and ahhs. notice the heighth of the water compared to the trees.

this was as high as it got. it was amazing! i just couldn't get over how neat our God is. to create something so crazy and so awesome knowing it would thrill and fascinate His people. almost everything we saw on this trip so obviously pointed to our amazing and creative God! He is so good!

near old faithful. this water was constantly boiling. so neat!

really pretty! different kinds of algae grow in the different temperatures. this kind made it look blue.

a little further up the road was sapphire pool. i think this was my favorite.

some of these were hard to take pictures of, because the cold weather made lots of steam.

then on to the 'grand canyon of yellowstone'. it was amazing. it was so loud even from really far away.

the other end of the canyon...

on our way back home. it was such a great day! i am excited to go back with the kids some day and spend a little more time.

grand teton national park

the place we stayed was only about a mile from the entrance to the grand teton national park. we spent a lot of time in this area, going to and from other places, and just heading up this way if we didn't have any plans in the evening. it is really beautiful, and besides this one small stretch of road where the potholes were big enough to swallow our rental car, i loved every bit of it!!


this was right after you entered the park. when we stepped out of the car to take a picture, it smelled so good! the entire field in front of us was sagebrush. it smells like sage. it was so pretty. there were miles and miles of fields of sagebrush all around the jackson area. i loved it!

this is jenny lake. we hiked around here later in the week.

joel thinks this picture is funny because it looks like i am doing the robot. i am not, however. it is the latest craze- getting your hair out of your face for a picture.

i like this one. this is the area where we saw the mamma bear and her cubs. (pictures in another post.)

okay, so this is our COMPACT rental car. we were thinking an accord or something. now the pothole comment earlier makes a little more sense. we thought it would be funny to take a picture of our car with the wheels turned in with mountains in the background as if it were a high performance vehicle. one small funny thing was in the visitor center they have all kinds of information about the number of wildife (bison, elk, deer, moose, etc.) killed by vehicles. all to make you be more aware! one of the posters has a picture of a bison and says "imagine hitting a volkswagon." stating that it is what it is like to hit a bison. i began to wonder... what happens when a volkswagon hits a volkswagon? it might not be the bison that loses on that one! the bonus was almost being able to drive under the legs of the elk that would not move out of the road. having this car really is a fun memory. i am thankful that our luggage fit in it. and we had no trouble parallel parking.

the tetons in the evening...

wildlife

the first animal we saw. an elk. they are so big! i was afraid that they would charge us and knock our car over. thankfully, that never happened.



a mama bear and her three cubs. (one cub is climbing the tree.) thankfully, this is the only bear we saw. you learn pretty early if there are lots of cars pulled over and people with cameras, there is some type of wildlife around. this time, someone had discovered this bear. we weren't super close, but close enough for my liking. :)

joel was looking for a moose and a coyote just walked right by!

an elk at yellowstone.

another elk at yellowstone.

bison at yellowstone.

the only time we saw a moose. this was taken from the tram.

be bear aware!

elk. you get pretty used to seeing them. they are everywhere. even standing in the middle of the road after dark. they don't even move when you honk and slam on brakes. they just stand there and look at you (not a deer-in-the-headlights kind of way, but a i'm-not-moving-you-are kind of way) while you swerve to miss them. yikes!

this is an owl. lots of people had stopped to take pictures of it. we just stopped in the road and took pictures of it out of the window. it looked right at joel and then....

it started to fly! right towards us! i screamed! then it landed. no where near us. joel laughed. the many photographers frowned at the silly screaming lady in the volkswagon. these wild animals make me jittery.

okay, so if you made it through all of these posts, a hearty congratulations. you need to go to wyoming. it was wonderful. if you want to bring joel and i along, we would make great tour guides! :)