First Trip #2

Folks,
I'll upload a few more pictures from our first trip around the top of the Grand Loop. We saw hundreds of Bison - sometimes solitary, sometimes in a herd. The herd that was by the lake was in motion, coming from the right of the picture to the left. It was easy to envision the much bigger herds moving across the great prairies in the not-too-distant past. We saw many of them close to the road and some almost in the road. The close-up is closer than it looks. Lorraine took it with a very wide-angle lens. It was within a few feet of the car, and very intimidating.

The pronghorn antelope picture is from the Lamar Valley - a prime viewing area for lots of different animals. It is a very large plain - several miles wide - with mountains on both sides. The road follows the edge of the hills on the north side of the river plain and goes from Tower Junction to the Northeast Entrance of the park and Cooke City. It is a really beautiful place. We'll go back there again.

I've included a couple of pictures of the Lower Falls in the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River - both from Artist's Point on the south canyon rim. Even when you are there looking at it, this doesn't look real. The color of the canyon walls makes it obvious why this is called Yellowstone Park. The canyon is truly spectacular. We could see tracks on a sheer slope on the opposite side of the canyon that could only have been made by a mountain goat. Anything else would have tumbled into the canyon and the river.

We drove to Bozeman today (Friday) to do some shopping. It was raining most of the time, but the mountains were still spectacular! We got back to Mammoth to hear that it snowed here while we were gone. At the higher altitudes in the park, which is pretty much everywhere else, it snowed a lot - from 4 to 8 inches. Some of the roads that we traveled yesterday are closed again today. The temperature here is in the low 40s. This is hard to reconcile with messages from home that things (at Two Rivers CC) are being rescheduled because of the intense heat. I check the weather at home (Williamsburg) and see that today's high is to be 97 and tomorrow's 104. I'd say that I feel your pain, but it is currently hard to imagine, since we are wearing several layers all the time and it snowed several times here today (Saturday). [I apologize for the fact that these blogs are written over several days. The intersection of the time available to write and internet access is very, very small, so it is hard to get the news out in real time.]

I don't think I've told you that I'm no longer a dishwasher. I start tomorrow (Sat.) training to be a "lead" in the Employee Dining Room (EDR). I don't really know yet, but I think that this just means that in addition to getting to do all the scut work required to make the EDR work, I get to have some responsibility for making it happen. We'll see. For the moment, I consider this very good news. Saturday evenings input is that the first day went OK. The EDR is a lively place, since we serve over 700 meals daily. I get to meet all the Mammoth employees as well as many for the other areas of the park that enter through Mammoth.

I'll sign off for now. I hope to get this out to you on Sunday Morning, June 8, but it may not happen. We are having a great time, but we miss all of you.
Doug & Lorraine