Christmas in Yellowstone Park

Ken and Merry came out to visit over Christmas for the 2nd year in a row. We rented a cabin for Christmas Eve in Silver Gate MT. Silver Gate is at the northeast entrance to Yellowstone Park and the only way to get there in the winter is to go through the park.

It was a great trip even though it was snowing like crazy on the way in. We saw wolves on both days and had a great stay at the cabins. It is always fun to go through Yellowstone on the holidays because it seems pretty empty of tourists compared to a normal day.

Cassidy Spoiled? No way!

As usual we were completely spoiled for Christmas. Unfortunately our daughter was so obsessed with trash that she had a hard time getting her presents unwrapped. Every time that she tore off a little piece of wrapping paper she had to run into the kitchen to throw it away.

Cassidy meets Santa Claus take 2

We went to visit Santa Claus at the mall today for the 2nd time. Our first visit went so badly that we do not have the pictures to prove it. In Cassidy's defense I thought that the Santa on our first visit looked kind of creepy too. This Santa looked a lot better and he must have been used to crying kids because he never even blinked when she started sobbing on his lap. Poor Cassidy, the things that we put our kids through for pictures can be so traumatic.

Happy Halloween!

Cassidy had a fun Halloween. She played at Teresa's house for part of the day and then I picked her up and took her to my work. We had trick or treating from desk to desk and my little bumblebee made a killing! That evening we stopped to visit some friends. We decided to wait until next year to try the door to door thing.

Merry's Fall Visit

We had a great week with Merry. She flew in on the 3rd and stayed until the 10th. We took her to the Missouri Headwaters State Park which is where the Madison, Gallatin & Jefferson Rivers all combine to create the Missouri River.

We also took a trip through Yellowstone. It was a great trip. We saw two grizzly bears (one of them crossed the street one car ahead of us) and a bull moose with two cows. I think that we saw all of these critters within in 5-10 miles so it was pretty exciting.

Bear Trap Canyon

What a gorgeous day for a hike! We took a trip to Bear Trap today with Ryan, his uncle and his cousin. We hiked along the Madison River and it was so windy that I thought Cassidy and I were going to go for an accidental swim at one point. The colors are changing here and I think that this is the most colorful fall that we have had out here.

Pipestone

Today we went to play over by Butte (for Sandy that is Butt). The Pipestone area is dirt bike heaven so Dave's friend Derek was excited to get his toys out. The rest of us were ready for a few short hikes. Cassidy loved all of the rocks and she had fun playing hide and seek around them.

Water Baby!

Cassidy and I went to visit the new water park that they built here in town. Cassidy loved it! She could not stay in one place and everywhere that she went was at full speed. She was definitely scaring me every other minute because she is not very good at that running thing yet. I didn't have the heart to stop her though because she was having too much fun.

Blue Angels

We had our air show this week and we were right under the flight path of the Blue Angels. We spent both days of the air show sitting on the porch and on the back deck watching the planes fly right over our house.

Cassidy did not like the jets. She would start screaming every time the Blue Angels would fly over but she did like the the fact that Ryan came over to visit and he brought her favorite doggie, Hara, over to play.

Glacier Park

On the second week of Ken & Merry's visit we took a trip up to Glacier Park. I think that Glacier is the most amazing place that I have ever been to. Every time we visit I am stunned by the mountain views and the lakes and water falls that we hike to.

This trip we stayed at the Hidden Moose Lodge in Whitefish for the first night. Dave & I found this lodge on our honeymoon and we keep coming back to it every time that we are in the area. We have taken Merry and Ken there before so they love the place almost as much as we do.

We spent the next day going through the park on the Going to the Sun Road. I can't imagine that there is another road that is this amazing. I always spend half the time holding on because the mountain drops off at the edge of the road. On the second night we stayed in the park at the Many Glacier Lodge. this is the first time that we have stayed in the park and it was really a great place to stay. The lodge was built in 1915 on the edge of Swiftcurrent Lake and has the most wonderful views of the lake and mountains.

We took a hike back to Avalanche Lake and we took a boat ride across Swiftcurrent Lake so that we could hike back to Iceberg Lake. I can't believe that we have been to Glacier so many times and we never realized that some of these lakes were here.


Ken, Merry and Jerry will be leaving at the end of the week and we will be very sorry to see them leave. Merry has already started planning her next trip out here some time in October. (Yeah!)

More Visitors! Yeah!

Merry, Ken and Geneva flew in to stay for a few weeks to play and to build us a new deck. Yeah!!!! We have had a great first week and the deck is amazing. Merry and Ken squeezed in the time for a little golfing.

On the 4th of July we took a family trip out to Hyalite. Tony's son Jerry took a ton of family pictures but I'm still working on getting copies of them. We spent the evening in the driveway watching fireworks shows from all over the valley. Cassidy only lasted for the first 15 minutes or so but she seemed to get a big kick out of them.

Bears! Bears! Bears!

On Friday Mom and I picked up Keri and we took off to see Yellowstone. We went to Mammoth Hot Springs and then down to Old Faithful and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone we also took a quick stop to see Yellowstone Lake and some of the geysers and hot springs. On our way back to their campsite we went through Hayden Valley and we saw 4 black bears. Most of the bears were close to the road and one was actually crossing the road.

On Saturday after Dave was finished working we loaded up the tent and camped with Keri & Bill at Mammoth Campground. On Saturday evening and on Sunday the boys went fishing and the the girls were off to do more site seeing. We went to see Tower Falls, Lamar Valley and we went up the Beartooth Highway which has the most impressive views south of Glacier Park. We also got to see mountain goats, 5 grizzlies and at least 4 more black bears.

Grotto Falls

Keri & Bill took off for Yellowstone to do some fishing. Mom, Cassidy & I took a picnic lunch up to Grotto Falls. If you go back into the Hyalite Canyon about 3 miles past the reservoir you will come to the trailhead and the hike is around 2 miles back to the falls. I was definitely breaking Mom in on the whole high altitude thing but she was a complete trooper. Cassidy is loving her backpack hiker and I am finally getting used to hiking with her on my back. We climbed up to the top of the falls and I conned Mom into standing at the edge for a couple of pictures.

Fairy Lake

On Tuesday the 19th Mom, Keri & Bill finally arrived! Yeah!!! On Wednesday Bill took off to go fishing in the Gallatin Canyon. Cassidy & I took Mom & Keri on a hike around Fairy Lake. Fairy Lake is on the other side of the Bridger Mountains and you have to take a brutal dirt road back about six miles. It was a gorgeous day and the lake was nice and clear. I always forget how beautiful this lake is and how horrible the road is. Oh well, the trip was definitely worth the trouble to get there.

Birthday Girl

I can't believe that our little girl is a year old. This last year has gone by so quickly. We had a pretty low key weekend at home. We took Cassidy over to the park and she had a blast on the swings and on the slide.

We decided that we are going to have a belated birthday party for Cassidy while Ken and Merry are here in July. That way everyone can see the new deck that Ken and Dave are going to build.

Wildlife Sightings

Tony and I took a drive up to Big Sky to do a quote for a job and had a great wildlife day! First we had the best run in with a young grizzly. He was hanging out on a private road and didn't seem to mind at all that we were stalking him. We took a ton of great pictures all from the safety of the truck. Neither of us were willing to get out just in case there was a big momma bear hanging out in the area.

About a 1/2 hour later we were at the job site and looked up the hill to see 2 bull moose hanging out in the customer's front yard. How great would it be to have a front yard that attracts moose and grizzlies?

Hopefully we will have a couple of days like this when our visitors are here. We are counting the days until everyone arrives. Mom, Keri & Bill will be here around 6/18 and Ken, Merry & Geneva will be out on 6/30. We can't wait!!!!

Hidden Lakes

The Hidden Lakes are a series of 5 or 6 high mountain lakes that are about a 2 1/2 mile hike back in the Gallatin Canyon off of a Portal Creek trailhead. Because the weatherman told us that the temperature would get up to about 65 and that there might be some isolated showers we decided that this would be a good day to try it. He lied! We made it back about a mile into the hike and it was about 40 degrees with a steady cold rain. We ran into one of Dave's skiing buddies on his way out (What are the chances that the only other person back there would be one of Dave's friends?) and he told us that we might make it another 1/4 mile before the snow would be too high to hike through. Because Dave & Tony were silly enough to believe the weatherman they were wearing shorts. All of us were getting a little bit too cold so we decided to turn around and try this hike again a little later in the summer.

Lava Lake

On 6/2 we hiked back to Lava Lake. It was a 3 mile hike that was all uphill. The last part of it was all switchbacks and I seriously thought that I was going to die before we made it to the lake. I was totally embarrassed when our group was passed by a little old lady about 2 miles in. I have got to get back into shape!

I couldn't believe what a gorgeous day it was, the temperature made it up into the 80's but there was a great breeze the entire time. There were so many great places to stop and the entire trip had great views of the creek. The trip was definitely one of my favorites.

Cassidy had a blast, every time that we would stop and take her out of her pack she would try to climb back into it. She also seemed to think that she needed to put every pine cone she could find into her mouth. I carried her most of the way back so that I could get used to carrying her. I am starting to second guess all of the extra helpings of food that she thinks she needs.

Memorial Day Weekend

Cassidy had her first camping experience on Memorial Weekend. On Friday and Saturday night we stayed in a rustic campsite on Storm Castle Creek. It was pretty cold on Friday night but it didn't seem to bother Cassidy at all. I couldn't believe how much she enjoyed hanging out at the campsite.

Our friends Kory & Holly came up to visit us on Friday night with their kids. We had hot dogs and smores by the fire. On Saturday Tony & Ryan came up to go for a hike with Dave while Cassidy and I hung out at the campsite.

Sunday they started calling for rain so we decided not to push our luck with camping. I am pretty glad that we didn't stay because it ended up raining and snowing.

On Monday Tony took us on a drive over to Ennis and around to Quake & Hebgen lakes. We found some really cool places for hiking and camping that we will have to go back to visit. Unfortunately it was a little too cold and wet to take Cassidy out in it too much.

Mom, Dad & Granny

Mom, Dad & Granny flew in for a quick visit on 5/17. This was Granny's first flight ever so I am hoping that she thought it was worth the trip. I took them up to Big Sky on Friday and then we took them to Yellowstone on Saturday. We had great luck with seeing animals. We saw three wolves, two moose, an eagle, a fox, elk and bison.

Unfortunately Cassidy came down with croup on Saturday night so we didn't make it back to Yellowstone on Sunday for the 2nd half of the tour. Mom will be hitching a ride back out here with Keri and Bill in the middle of June so maybe she can get the rest of the tour then.