They Were Out Of Moose Drool

Yellowstone was fascinating. The "paint pots" were incredibly interesting. I've now seen a fumarole. I learned so much. Before yesterday, I had no idea that Yellowstone was the top of an ancient volcano. I really loved the baked, twisted tree skeletons everywhere. I took like a million and twelve pictures of those - but I won't bore you with posting them. (However, someday I'll post pictures of the art quilts series I plan to make based on them.)

The obligatory photo of Old Faithful:

Remember how I said we were going to bike? Yeah. About that. It so didn't happen. I could barely breathe when we were just hiking around. And my ankles were swollen - like 9 months pregnant kind of swollen. And I look like I have leprosy from my peeling sunburn which is ok except I was not about to risk getting even a tiny bit more sun. So...we're a little off our training plan.


As we were leaving the park, a chipmunk ran across the road. It was the largest land critter we had seen (well, except for some enormous specimens of tourist). Where were all the elk and curly horned rams and such?! About the time we got whiny about having to leave Yellowstone without seeing the famous creatures, we came upon a field with a large herd of bison in it. There were babies frisking around, but close to the trees. My camera wouldn't zoom enough to get a good picture of them. There were some rolling on the ground with their bellies in the air. They were snorting. They sounded exactly like our redbone coonhound, Tallulah. This fellow practically stuck his face in the car. (It was actually kind of scary to be that close and I was relieved when he wandered back to his buddies.)
We spent the night in Cody, Wyoming which is a town that embraces it's Old West-ness with just the right amount of cheese and drama. There is a rodeo every night in the summer and a cowboy song revue and even a shoot-out with cowboys and saloon girls in front of Irma's. We had a lovely dinner (steak sandwiches and beer) with only one complaint.
They were out of Moose Drool. Donna got Old Faithful Ale instead (which turned out to be fine, even if the name wasn't as much fun). On to Mt. Rushmore! Then we're done with the sight seeing. We have to be back in Nashville by 6pm on Friday (to see the boys and to do some long training over the weekend) before finally heading all the way home to NC on Monday. Thank you for all of your fun comments and I promise to be a good blog buddy and catch up on all my return commenting soon! Hope everyone's training/lives fare well on this hump day.