Time Away

Angie and I took some time a couple of weeks ago to travel to our favorite place in the whole world to do a late 16th anniversary trip. We left the kids with the grandparents, who we are so grateful for, and did a trip that started with one day in Yellowstone, followed by a few more in the cabins in Grand Teton National Park that we have stayed in a few other times before with the family.

Yellowstone was very fun. Lots of baby bison everywhere. We took our bikes with us this time and did a long bike ride around a bunch of the geysers surrounding Old Faithful, then continued on a hike up to the top of the mountain overlooking the valley. It was nice, and something our kids would never have done.



Baby bison jamming up traffic. We didn't mind.





The Daisy Geyser, I think, we happened upon it right when it went off. That happened a lot that day, just dumb luck.



View from our hike when we started out. The river, the bison, and the steam.



Overlooking the valley. Old Faithful is in the top right corner of this picture, that is where our journey started that day. Kids would have died. Can you see the reflection of the bear in our sunglasses?



River Side geyser, I think. This was erupting when we went by. Very impressive right next to the river, a great show. Many of these geysers are far better than Old Faithful, just not as "faithful" as far as when they erupt.



View from our cabin window in the Tetons.





This is the only place we could get any wireless connectivity, which was very nice. You can see Iola reflected in the window, she and her husband, Hal, own and run the cabins, they are great people and seem like family to us now.



16 mile bike ride we did along the base of the mountains. Angie was a trooper and kicked butt, she liked it much more than this picture seems to show. She doesn't bike as much as I do, so I get a bit more out of climbing a good hard hill than she does. Luckily there weren't many of those. We rode out to Jenny Lake and walked around a bit (too early for the canoes), then rode back.




Our Cabin, the Bunkhouse.



The classic Moulton Ranch barn, literally walking distance from our cabin.



Lots of runoff. We saw many flooded rivers and valleys on this trip, it was very interesting.




We also took some time to go to church in Jackson, get some good food (Billy's Giant Burgers are awesome!), and do a scenic run down the Snake river. It was very relaxing and was great to spend some time together alone in such a beautiful place. Thanks again to those who helped make this possible for us, it's nice to know your kids are well taken care of when you take off for such a long time.

All the pics, if you're so inclined. Many of them are extremely redundant, those mountains are just too beautiful to not take pictures of them constantly:



--

Greg