Two trips to Yellowstone and a Wedding

On the weekend of the 4th, we headed out to my grandma's house in Ashton, ID. We spent the week up there and had something to do almost every day. It was a lot of fun, we visited Yellowstone twice and were at the Rexburg Temple to see my sister get married.

Tuesday we all hiked Mt. Washburn in Yellowstone. It's a 3.2 mile hike to the top (and of course the same coming down) so that's 6.4 miles total. The boys had their own Camelbacks so they felt like real hikers. I even found a stick along the trail for them to use. We saw many small critters along the way and a coyote. The coyote was just walking along the trail on our way down, I could have reached out to touch it.

















While in Yellowstone, we saw three bears. The traffic was unbelievable around those sightings. We were responsible for one of the traffic jams as I was the first to spot a black bear in the woods. It got a little too close for comfort, but the van was close enough for me to jump in and take more pictures from the window.



We saw a beautiful elk with a nice rack of velvet covered horns, I was only 25 feet away from it so it was a real treat for me. I must have taken 50 photos of it, this was my favorite one.....



At some point during the week, we visited a petting zoo and Larry found a new wild girlfriend.... I caught him during the perfect moment when he was saying, "Ohhhhhhh."

I don't know what it is about animals and Larry, but they love him! This one just leaned into him and he knew just what spots made her turn to putty in his hands.

I had to get up at 5am to get this next shot, it's in Island Park near Swan Lake (it might even be Swan Lake, but I can't be sure). If the sun had come all the way up, then the fog over the water would have disappeared. I saw it on the way up to Yellowstone the day before and wished I had stopped then, but making a special trip by myself was better because I could spend 20 minutes getting the right shots and walking around in the marsh. I took 3 differently exposed photos and turned it into an HDR photo with a special software, here is the result....



Some other random shots around my grandparents' farm.....



Another HDR photo - this is of an old tractor on the farm...


It seems like we go to the Bar J Wrangers in Jackson, WY every year, but I never get tired of the comedy and music. This guy was looking for a person with a camera. When he saw me, he made a face.


And of course, there was my sister's wedding. She married Gnanam from Mauricious (a little island off the coast of Madagascar) and his parents flew all the way here to attend - even though they are not LDS and could not be there for the actual ceremony. They brought sari's from India which they flew there to purchase back in January. I had a lot of fun wearing mine, they certainly are beautiful. Tara wore a wedding sari. I will post a few of her favorite photos....