Tea time in the sun room

Tonight we took it a little bit easier than normal and decided to take our mugs, get some tea, and relax with good friends in the hotel sun room. It was nice to have Daniel down to visit for the evening.

Our weekend at Mammoth

We had our park wide meeting with the other ACMNPers over Memorial Day weekend. So our crew decided to camp up at Mammoth for the night, and Daniel was nice enough to let most of us sleep on his floor. We tried to hike Osprey Falls while we were there, but the snow was too bad and we settled for the Beaver Pond Loop instead, which was still a really nice hike. We then wrapped up our night with a few games of pool at the Two Bit Saloon. After a big sleepover in the Mammoth Employee dorm, we made our way to the Tower Roosevelt area the next morning with some of the staff members at Mammoth. We hiked Lost Lake trail and saw elk and bison frolicking in the meadows we hiked through. The Tower area is beautiful, and we saw 3 bears while we were there! After our morning hike, we went to our meeting of what the rest of our summer would look like with ACMNP! A church in Gardiner then hosted us for dinner and we had steaks and all kinds of good food that they had prepared for us!! It was a fantastic weekend and I can't wait to go back to visit again!

Duck Lake and West Thumb

A group of us went for a very short hike in the West Thumb area called Duck Lake. We walked along the beach and our boots made prints in the black sand that's there. Afterwards, we looked around the boardwalk at West Thumb, and the elk had no problem being really close to us. This is seriously the best way to wind down after a long day of work.

Weird weather

It's the end of May, and when I was going through my drawers of clothes today, I have to admit that I was pretty sad that I haven't been able to wear my shorts yet. The weather here is so strange! For the past few mornings, I've been waking up to a couple of inches of snow on the ground! Only for the sun to come out, it all melts away, and then the snow fall begins again in the evening. But we haven't let it stop our fun! We took another hike to see the Lower Falls from Artist Point, but this time it was in the snow. So for those of you that are from Kentucky, and you think the weather has been weird there, you should take a trip to Yellowstone in the summer! :)

A morning hike

This morning I was told not to come into work until 12:30. I didn't want to waste the day, so we got some friends together, piled a ridiculous amount of people into Marshall's car, and drove over to Canyon. We hiked along part of the South Rim Trail, where we got to see some powerful rapids and the Upper Falls. Now it's back to work!

First day off!

Today Liz let me borrow her car so I could drive up to Old Faithful and spend some time along the boardwalk of the Upper Geyser basin. It was a beautiful day, and I finally felt like it was May again! I filled my time by visiting all the hot springs and geysers, painting with watercolors, and talking to some of the tourists. There were some nice little surprises today also, like seeing the baby bison and driving back to the lake that was covered by a rainbow.