Song of Wyoming

Man, it sure did take us forever to find an internet connection. We checked "several" Dairy Queens to no avail. We ended up making the supreme sacrifice tonight of eating in the Mural Room at the Jackson Lake Lodge. They had HONEY ROSEMARY ICE CREAM!!! It was awesome. Also, there was some wine involved with dinner, obviously. I'm typing this out as I'm staring out the huge picture windows onto the Tetons. Maryland Dad, I can't believe you climbed to the top of the tall one. It's still covered in snow. That must have been scarier than our Angel's Landing hike.

Anyway, Seattle was awesome. All I had to do was walk Rick through a few of the vendors at Pike's Place Market and he was ready to move. The shear volume of fresh fish and veggies and cherries and pasta and coffee, etc. was astounding. I also showed Rick the awesome Chocolate Box that I found when I was here on business and we stopped by the Beecher's store. Cheese for Everyone!!! We rounded out the Seattle experience by sampling some Washington wines at the Tasting Room and walking down the street where we just happened to run into a Pearl Jam cover band playing live for the 4th of July celebrations. We had dinner and drove literally all night to get to Glacier National Park.

It was extremely beautiful at glacier. I put a snowball on Rick's neck (I didn't have the heart to put it all the way down his back). We had a great drive up the Going-to-the-sun road and hiked a bit around Many Glaciers. Rick took a quick nap by one of the lakes after we saw a Momma and Baby moose at what I thought was fairly close range. Glacier is like the Rockies but more dramatic (if you can imagine that). Of course, there used to be over 100 glaciers and now there are only 23 or so, so if you want to actually see a glacier at Glacier National Park book your trip soon. This is definitely a place to return to. Plenty of hiking plus lots of stuff to do from your car.

From there, we finished listening to The Sun Also Rises (which Rick still hates) as we drove to Yellowstone. We have decided to use some phrases from the book. Getting Tight sounds better than Getting Drunk. We will also start trying to say think like "That's a lot of rot!" Beware. We will be pulling these phrases out at much as we can when we get back.

As we pulled into Yellowstone, it started to pour. This has been our first rain during our entire month long trip. It didn't even rain in Seattle, so we can't really complain. It did make us decide to stay in the Grants Pass Lodge over camping. As we drove around in the rain we took photos of bison, and female elk. We also stopped by some of the geologic fumeroles along the road to our lodge. This morning we drove around and did some plank boardwalk hiking. I don't really think walking on a boardwalk counts as hiking, but the ground is so unstable that I appreciated not having to walk on something that could start bubbling and boiling at any minute. We saw Old Faithful and had a nice lunch at the Teddy Roosevelt Lodge. The Roosevelt beans were awesome. Yellowstone was our first national park and it is really diverse. It has scary mudpots and things that really put the power of the earth into perspective. It also has prairie land, mountains, lakes and rivers. We took an awesome shot of a grizzly that we got from the safety of our car and a good photo of a bull elk. Jeannine, we also shot a photo of a ground squirrel just for you.

Tomorrow we will be getting up nice and early and will hopefully hit Mount Rushmore and the surrounding area.