Going to the Zoo

For our anniversary this year, Brad and I headed to Salt Lake. Brad took me out to dinner and then we headed over to the Gateway. We went to the Clark Planetarium and bought tickets for two of their shows. First, they had a star show. However, it wasn't the greatest show. It seemed like it was written for kindergartners. The announcer was great though. He was a nerdy kid, with long dark hair, that laughed at everything he said. I did learn some stuff about a space ship that they sent to Jupiter to take pictures and a lander that was going to Titan (one of Jupiter's moons). Best quote of the night, "This is a picture from the Huygens lander and I just stepped in gum." This guy then continued to come back to the same spot, step in the gum, and tell us about it. It kept us entertained.

The next show was better. It was about the Space Station and how they put it together. We got to wear awesome 3-D glasses. The show was pretty cool too.

The next day, we went to the zoo. Brad really wanted to try out his new lens, so it was really fun for him to take so many pictures.

This giant elephant kept making the funniest sounds.

This is me being a gopher, from a gopher hole. It was weird popping my head up and finding a gopher staring right back at me.

We had great anniversary together. It's nice to say that we've been married for a year and we still love being married.

Our Fourth Day: Catching Everything We Missed

This was our last day in Yellowstone. But we still had some things that we needed to see before we left. So, we headed to Firehole Lake Drive.

Our next stop was Midway Geyser Basin. We had been wanting to go here since day one, but just never got to it. I'm really glad we made it.

Grand Prismatic Spring

Excelsior Geyser

We went back to see Old Faithful again. There was a whole geyser basin behind Old Faithful that we didn't see on our first day, so went to see it. We're glad we did or else we would have missed seeing Lion Geyser going off. It only goes off every 6 hours to 4 days, and it goes off in a series with the first one being the highest and longest. We got to see the first one of the series and it lasted for over 8 minutes and went up 90 feet.

Another geyser going off.

This spring was cool because you could see the rock overhanging the pool.

It was time to start heading home. We were a little disappointed that we hadn't seen a moose, but on our way back we did see some big brown animal down in the river. We turned around hoping it would be a moose, but it just ended up being more elk. Oh well. It was fun to take a few last pictures before we left.

It was so cute to see them form into a straight line to cross the river.

That was our trip to Yellowstone National Park. We'll have to come back again since we had so much fun and would love to go do more things up in Yellowstone. All in all it was a great place to get away, have fun, and celebrate one great year together.

Our Third Day: Waterfalls

Our goal today was to make it to the Upper and Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. We had skipped them yesterday to make sure we made it to Mammoth. We did pretty good about not stopping anywhere on our way there. We did make one stop and found a bunch of buffalos by Yellowstone Lake.

I think this looks like a headless buffalo. Don't worry, he just had his head turned.

We headed out and made it to the Upper Falls. This fall was pretty spectacular (it was over 100 feet high).

While we were looking at the Upper Falls we found this little pathway along the rim of the canyon. We thought we'd go for a little walk since we'd been the car most of the morning. We followed it along until we came to the trailhead for Uncle Tom's Point to go down the canyon to see the Lower Falls. Now, let me explain a little about this hike. This hike mostly consists of one really long staircase (328 steps to be exact) that is suspended off from the side of the mountain and whatever ground could be found underneath. I didn't realize we were going to going on an actual hike or I would have changed from my flip flops. But we went down anyways, flip flops or no flip flops. The climb was a little scary. You would look down to see where to place your foot and you could see through the metal grid stairs down to the side of the mountain 15 feet below. At times it was a little freaky since you could see the ground so far beneath you as you were stepping down. It was worth it though for the view we had at the bottom.

Going up wasn't as bad, but this time we got a better look at what exactly was holding up on the side of the mountain.

I think this picture give a small sense of how far we climbed down.

We we got up to the top we read the sign for Uncle Tom's Point a little more carefully. Evidently, when Uncle Tom made the hike in the late 1890's he had people climb down the canyon on wooden ladders and rope handrails. And they went farther down then we did. They had this great picture of the ladies going down in their skirts, hats, and gloves. I don't think I would have gone down in those circumstances (and I had been complaining about going down stairs in flip flops.)

We then drove down to Artist's Point to have a different look at the Lower Falls.

Here is a movie of both waterfalls.

We then headed out and drove towards Norris Geyser Basin. We stopped to see Virginia Cascade.

We made it to Norris Geyser Basin. We only saw one half of the Geyser Basin though. The other side that we didn't see had the world's largest geyser located in it (shooting up 300-400 ft), but it wasn't going to be erupting while we were there. We did see Porcelain Basin.

If you turned around you would find this little lake.

After this we started our drive back home. We stopped in the Hayden Valley for more pictures of buffalo.

We also stopped to see some mudpods. This one was Sulphur Caldron.

We also meet a family of deer here.

We also saw the Dragon's Mouth.

That was the last stop for the night. We made it home before dark and might actually get to bed at a decent hour. Tomorrow we need to finishing seeing a few things before we head for home. There are a couple basins that we haven't gone to see yet so it should be another great day in Yellowstone tomorrow.