Yellowstone

Are you guys ready for some serious picture overload? How could I go to Yellowstone for my first time and not take a butt load of pictures? We had some really cool, and apparently unusual experiences. It was so much fun, even though it was so so cold. Oh man, it snowed while we were up there. Our first day it pretty much didn't stop raining. Each day we went on a big long walk/hike and the last full day we had in Yellowstone was the only one where we didn't get rained or hailed on. The second morning we decided to switch campsites. Apparently it was a good choice because at Madison it was snowing, and up at Mammoth it wasn't even raining. The wind up there was even good for dying out the very wet tent.

Yup, that's a bear! look hard.

This video is awesome! After seeing old faithful we walked about a mile to see Morning Glory pool. Which is the picture above. We were all pretty much soaking wet by the time we made it to the pool. We were just off the trail, on the boardwalk which goes up above the pool a little bit something awesome happened!! We were about to head back and were facing the trail...when this happened. Now watch the video. I love all the babies we saw, that's the awesome part of going so early in the season.

This is Mammoth Hot Springs. It was so pretty up there, and luckily it had stopped raining.

Can you see the pronghorn in the background?

 Can you see the bear print?

Alrigh, if you can't tell I ahad some issues organizing this amount of pictures. Holy cow, yeah, so I gave up trying to move them up and down because everything would then get messed up. I have a few cool stories from Yellowstone.

Do you see that picture a few up of the mama elk and her baby? The campground host at Mammoth warned us an elk had a baby and they were by the garbage can. Well, that was a bit from us so we weren't worried. We went and saw Mammoth Hot Springs and came back and she had moved to where we took that picture. It was at the campsite next to us. She still didn't seem to mind us, and we left off on a hike. We were hailed on during the hike so we decided to head back. When we were walking up we noticed her sitting in the campsite to the other side of us from where she had been before.

She hadn't paid us any mind so we were aware, but started pulling out wood for dinner. We got that far before she freaking charged us. Yeah, she charged us. Luckily we were all right by the big van and were able to jump in. She got so close to Hal though. Oh man, it was scary because it was so unexpected. After being trapped in the van for a while we tried calling the emergency number, but no one answered. We were so lucky we had cell service at this campsite. Hal called 911 and just asked them to send out a ranger. A truck pulled up with two park rangers. By this point the elk was lying down eating, being all calm.

I think that the prerequisite for being a park ranger is a lack of nomal social skills. Seriously. The girl ranger wasn't bad at all..but the guy was a little bad. He talked to us about how the elk was like a horse, so calm just eating the grass....umm, pretty sure I've never had a horse charge me. They said a mama elk will defend her baby up to 100 yards. We were there talking and she was fine, just where she was. So we started to get stuff out for dinner again..and the rangers were about to leave. Another ranger had come and went up the road to block off access to the bathroom so people wouldn't go up there because she had charged 3 people into the bathroom and wouldn't let them out while we were waiting for the rangers, because it was close to the baby. Well a ranger went up there and the mama got upset and she totally charged the park ranger who had told us about how she was so docile.

She ended up charging us like 4-5 times, so they decided to swith our site away from her. The ranger went back up by the baby to distract her and the campsite host, and 2 rangers booked it to help us take down our tent and get out of there before she noticed. We had to share a campfire with some other people who had been charged and needed to be moved. The guys name was Ed, and his son was Eddie, and they were some Missouri. It was awesome, and I don't think I'll ever quite forget them. Can you believe that though, we stinking got charged by a mama elk?

Apparently she had given birth in the campsite the night before we came up there. Some of the elk have adapted to having babies in campsites because the bears won't hunt the babies to the campsites because they don't like the people. The babies can't walk well until they are around 24 hours old, so that's why she was still in the campsite. The next morning she left.

So our other awesome story is when we were driving out. We had been stopped by a ton of buffalo hanging out on the road which had put us like over a half and hour even more behing schedule. So we were driving along and this guy comes running across the street, so we stopped to let him pass and get on the other side of us when we look over to see why he was running. Oh, maybe because a bear was chasing him. For real, the bear came almost all the way to the street, and stood up, it was so crazy, he like stood up at our car. We like to think of it like we saved that guys life. haha, that bear could have gotten him if he wanted. I'm sad my camera was in my coat and by the time I got it out he was wondering off into the woods again. Man, that would have been the most awesome picutre of a bear standing up all aggressive like.

Those are my main awesome stories. My friendlies surprised me with a trip to Lava Hot Springs on the way home. Too bad because of the bison, bear, and road construction we were literally like 5 hours late to meet our friends who came up to meet us. Good thing my friends are awesome and waited that long for us. It was a good way to end the trip, soaking in the warm water.

I had a great birthday, and a great time in yellowstone, I seriously recommend going. We saw a ton of animals and some really cool sites.