Overdue and excessivly long post about Yellowstone

So I figured it was about time I wrote about our trip to Yellowstone. I could say that the reason I haven't written for so long is because I have been super busy with lots of important stuff but that would be a lie. I just haven't been in the mood to write. Overall, the trip to Yellowstone was a great success - No rain, no freezing weather, no attack by psychotic buffaloes. I think early May is one of the best times to go to Yellowstone. There were enough people already and by next weekend I think the joy would have been gone for me and despite my concerns, the weather was incredible. The skies were so pretty that they lent themselves perfectly to my singing "Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam" for hours on end, much to the annoyance of Craig. It did get a bit cold at night but since we had a fire ready to toast our marshmallows, I was actually glad. Toasty fires are not fun when you are hot and we absolutely had to wear long sleeves and pants to stop the mosquitoes from eating us alive.

The first day was spent mostly on driving into the park to Old Faithful and waiting for her to be faithful. When we got there the sign said she was to go off in about 20 minutes later so we decided to hike the short 15-minute hike to the observation point to watch her go off instead of hanging out on the concrete slab with the people with toddlers and over 50 RV crowd. Of course, you can guess what happen, about 2 minutes before we get there, with us completely surrounded by trees and unable to see this most famous of geysers, we here lots of ohhs and ahhhs and by the time we get to where we can see, people are packing their cameras up and heading down. Luckily there are other geysers in the area so we hike around them (always within view of O.F, of course) for about 80 minutes until I finally get to watch her go off. It was pretty cool, despite the fact that I was sitting next to some sweaty overweight man eating a ham and mustard sandwich and in front of a family with 4 kids whose mother sprayed me with bug spray because her littlest one moved at the the wrong moment.

After we checked the 1st "must-do" item off our Yellowstone list we drove to our campsite, set it up and then drove off the find animals and go on a few more smallish hikes. We actually saw quite a few animals:

• Buffaloes
• Baby buffaloes (listed separately because they are very different from the adult kind & because they are soooo cute)
• Osprey
• Coyote
• Wapiti (also, but less interestingly, known as Elk)
• a bald eagle in a nest
• either a Yellow-bellied Marmot or a Uinta Ground Squirell, Craig and I disagree
• chipmunks
• geese (mostly from Canada)

I should be happy with our wildlife list, but I didn't see a moose so I can not be completely satisfied. I am happy that we didn't see any bears though so maybe that should cancel out.

The next day we finished driving the lower circle, stopping to take a longer hike (4-5 miles) and see the mud pots, geysers and waterfalls along the way. It was fun. Here are a few more pictures to help you imagine it. And it in a nutshell, that was our trip to Yellowstone.