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Last year we planted six fruit trees.

Two pears, two apples, a cherry and a peach.

This year I harvested a dozen pears, a dozen peaches and two apples.

We ate the pears.

The apples were admired for their mutant appearance and discarded.

Hopefully next year they will be mature enough for a better harvest.

I decided to save the peaches for a later date.

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I washed them.

Peeled them.

Coated them in lemon juice and sprinkled on a bit of sugar.

Just enough for a hearty pie in the depths of winter.

So who’s the sturdiest pilgrim in the neighborhood today?

Me!

On more than one occasion, I have heard the story about Ron Howard’s decision to cast Tom Hanks in the role of Jim Lovell, commander of the Apollo 13 mission to the moon. The story goes that even though Tom Hanks was not particularly ‘astronauty’ in his demeanor and lacked the military bearing that one might expect of a person in command of a space ship, Howard defended his choice with a statement something like… “Tom may not be the most astronauty of men, but of all the famous actors on the face of the earth, which one do you most want to make it back from the moon?”

Of course the answer is resoundingly, Tom Hanks.  It would kill us if Tom didn’t survive a trip to the moon.  Please come back Tom!  Come back to us!

Which leads to the following question and the one that the Country Doctor and I discussed at length last night…

Of all the famous actresses on the face of the earth, which one would we most want to make it back from the moon?

Having just seen Eat, Pray, Love, my first response was Julia Roberts. I would absolutely want Julia Roberts to come back from the moon. I have loved Julia Roberts ever since she had big hair and a torn, off the shoulder sweat shirt in Mystic Pizza.  Strangely, the Country Doctor didn’t care about Julia Robert’s big hair and he had zero concern as to whether or not she made it back from the moon. He fails to understand why she is even in movies in the first place and instead, he suggested Angelina Jolie.

The Country Doctor would definitely want Angelina to make it back from the moon and he was absolutely confident that most men on the planet would feel the same.  Sadly, it was my job to explain to the Country Doctor that as much as I too enjoy an occasional Angelina Jolie flick, I felt equally confident that most women on the planet would not exactly be crushed if she failed to survive a moon mission.

I then suggested Sandra Bullock. The Country Doctor nixed her immediately.  He suggested Reese Witherspoon and I said that Reese tends to play characters that most people would be ecstatic to leave behind on the moon.

We both thought that Jennifer Aniston might be a possibility as she is very like-able and often plays roles that are extremely relate-able, but then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

There is clearly one actress that I am positive most people would really, really want to make it back from the moon and when I said her name, the Country Doctor supported the choice fully.

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Renee Zellwegger.

Because if Bridget Jones didn’t make it back from the moon….

I would go and get her myself.

Look!  We all look so happy!  Like we actually like each other and enjoy being together!

I loved the book and the subsequent World Without End and wrote a post about both books.  I was really looking forward to watching the movie adaptation.  I remember the book was filled with plenty of debauchery and debasement with an extraordinarily evil villian (William),  but I also remember absolutely loving Jack and feeling like he was the very heart of the story.  In the film version – William is a quavering boy who operates at his mother’s beck and call and Jack is a distant, mute figure whose artistic endeavors seem leaden and uninspired.  I think the film was made off of an outline of the book rather than a true understanding of the characters.

And quite honestly – after Tom Builder was killed (played so gorgeously by Rufus Sewell) I have had a hard time staying interested.

And how exactly can one mention Rufus Sewell without referring to the greatest movie ever made?

Cold Comfort Farm.

Now, whoever made that film, based on the superb book by Stella Gibbons – got it absolutely right.

Pillars of the Earth however, is much better as a book – at least in my opinion.  What do you think?

I got to host a baby shower for a co-worker this weekend.  She is having a baby girl so after about three seconds of brainstorming I decided that the theme would be pink.

I know!

Brilliant!

This extremely daring and creative theme allowed me to offer my guests a variety of pink drinks.

I served pink strawberry margaritas and pink cosmos rimmed with (you guessed it) pink sugar.  The white bowl is full of  pink sugar (which I bought ready made in a department store) but some of my guests thought it was raw ground beef at first.

I served pink cocktail shrimp, strawberries, watermelon, pink cupcakes with pink icing decorated with pink sour watermelons and pink jordan almonds and this buffet of pinkness was rounded out by a fabulous selection of Sonic corn dogs which are revered by all my co-workers for their non-stop corny wonderment and their delicate yet so tasty pink interiors.

Cassie C. made her delectable sausage stars.

And the guest of honor drank a virgin pink margarita while we dutifully regaled her with every birthing horror story we could think of.

Not really.

Only I did that.

Cassie C made Cassie W a custom onesie.

Melissa made her a custom blankie.

It was a lovely evening.
And the next morning after drinking three cosmos – I woke up feeling like I had been rammed by a moose in the wilds of Wyoming and left to die.

They are so deceptively fruity that one easily forgets the vodka part.

Never fear!

There were plenty of left over cupcakes with which to soothe myself.

Day three of our Yellowstone/Teton vacation dawned bright and early as we packed up and left our campground at Signal Mountain to secure a site in Yellowstone right around the break of dawn. We had to stop and get gas and ice (and donuts and coffee) so that we didn’t get to Yellowstone until around 7:00 am.

This was the line when we arrived at the south entrance to Yellowstone National Park.

The line was moving very slowly in part because of an auto accident up ahead.  I am not sure what happened, but we eventually drove by the grisly remains of a pop-up camper that had one side sheered off.  The car that was pulling it was crushed as well.  A woman and a child stood beside the wreckage – the woman was screaming in the face of a ranger while her daughter stood by and looked mortified.  A roll of toilet paper dangled down the side of the clipped off pop-up while the aluminum ribs and insulation littered the side of the road.  From what I saw, it appeared that all the people involved in the wreck were okay.

The top cause of death at Yellowstone Park is car crashes.  This is followed by illness, drowning and falls.  Death by animal attack is rare, but signs in the park warning people of the imminent danger of animal attacks outnumber any other types of signs by about a million to one.  In fact, there aren’t any other type of warning signs.  Only animal danger signs.  Especially bear danger signs.  Which is why my son Drew was so frustrated when by day three we still hadn’t seen any bears yet.  If the signs are right, they must surely be lurking around every corner!

We drove from the south end of Yellowstone all the way to the north end stopping at almost every campground along the way looking for an spot.  We ignored the first few campgrounds hoping to get ourselves more centrally located.  This turned out to be a bad decision.  By the time we reached central Yellowstone, the campsites there were full.  There are about 2000 campsites in Yellowstone for campers with vehicles and 300 back country campsites.  If you multiply 2300 campsites by nine thousand French people, seven thousand Asians and four thousand assorted other Europeans plus maybe a couple hundred Americans and possibly a thousand Canadians you end up with forty two billion people camping in Yellowstone the same night that we were there.

Finally, we reached Mammoth Hot Springs on the northern edge of Yellowstone and our last hope of finding any room at the Inn inside of the park evaporated when we learned that it’s campground was also full.  The Country Doctor located a ranger to get some information about our options for overnight accommodations.  He learned that Gardiner, Montana (just outside the park) had both hotel rooms and campsites available and he also learned that people can camp in the designated wilderness areas of the Park for free.  I could tell by the CD’s voice that this ‘wilderness’ option was very appealing to him.  Not only was it scary, and dangerous, it was also cheap.  Unfortunately, the CD could tell from my voice that the idea of ‘wilderness’ camping was not at all appealing to me as it scary and dangerous and also cheap.

Sensing the danger in my voice, the raised hackles, the attack stance and the flaming eyeballs, the CD wisely opted to drive into Gardiner, Montana where we secured a campsite in a campground on a bluff overlooking the town.

Check it out!  We’re in Montana!  We didn’t even plan to go to Montana and yet here we are!

While the menfolk sat up the tent, I availed myself of a trip to a tricked out, clean bathroom with hot and cold running water and looked forward to a long hot shower later that night.  Then I fired up the camp stove and made us some smoked brats for lunch.

After lunch, we headed back to Yellowstone via the North entrance which is clearly marked by the enormous Roosevelt stone arch.  Theodore Roosevelt laid the cornerstone himself in 1903 during a two week vacation he was taking just up the road at Tower Falls within the park.  Later, a lodge was built to commemorate Roosevelt’s visit.  We would visit the lodge later that day.

But our first stop was the Boiling River.

The hot water from nearby Mammoth Hot Springs runs down from the travertine terraces and joins the icy cold Gardiner river where swimmers can find the perfect temperature to sit and soak after a hard day of traipsing all over the park.

Or a hard day of trying to find a campsite.

This spot was one of the highlights for the kids.

A half mile long hike filters out some of the crowds (including most Americans) so you will bathe primarily with the usual Asians and Europeans.

Languages from around the world will rise over the gentle roar of the hot water splashing into the cold river.  People conversing in German and French and Japanese, with the occasional familiar American tongue joining in.

The boys played for two hours in this river.  They nobly fought the current trying to get from one end of the warm area to the other.  We all really enjoyed it, except for the CD who got tired of relaxing after about ten minutes.  But he was outvoted as the boys were having a marvelous time and I was almost in a coma from the pure bliss of hot water against my skin.  The only thing that would have made it better was a glass of champagne, but food and beverages are banned in this area of the park.

From the river, we headed back into Mammoth Hot Springs which is the site of the first hotel built in Yellowstone.  Mammoth Hot Springs was a military fort and it’s tidy layout is a site for sore eyes for one who long for signs of civilization after too long on the trail.

A herd of elk was grazing on the lawn around the post office and the clinic. One ranger’s job was to place orange cones around the herd so that people would stay back far enough. As the herd moved through the town, the ranger with the cones would pick them up and re-set them in a new spot. I kind of wondered what her official title was.

“Elk Cone Lady”

“Herd Safety Cone Manager?”

“The Cone/Elk/Setter Upper Person?”

“Elk Cone Setter/Vocal Warning Over and Over Again Guide?”

“The Lady Who Shouts at the Tourists While Setting Up Cones around Herds of Elk?”

Or maybe just…

“That Irate Elk Ranger with the Orange Cones”

Hopefully it’s only a temporary assignment for her.

We found a parking space, glad to be rid of the pop-up camper, and set out to climb the travertine terraces.

I only got about halfway up when I spotted a bench and just sat down.  The terraces are interesting, but seeing the steaming pools and marbley pitted rock up close is not that much better than viewing it from a great distance.  The Country Doctor sat down beside me and said, “Have you had it?”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t you go back down to the town and we will meet you there.”

He didn’t have to make that suggestion twice.

I hiked back down, got an ice cream cone and enjoyed the terraces from a great distance.

Trust me, my experience was not diminished in any way.

After a while my family joined me.

We all got some ice cream and cold drinks and then with renewed energy, we continued on our tour of the park.

Our next destination was the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, but we got sucked off the main highway by a back road that wound through a bit of wilderness.

Even if you drive every road in Yellowstone (which I am sure we did) you will see only 2% of the park.

We saw an elk.

And some gorgeous country.

And encountered our first ‘bear jam.’

A black bear was feasting on some red currant bushes right by the side of the dirt road.  It was almost as if some centrally located control tower had ‘cued the bear’ for the oncoming tourists.

Trust me, we were watching for a safe distance.

We watched the bear for quite a while, partially because we were trapped by the cars in front of us, and partially because it was a bear.

The bear eventually ate all the currants and then he clawed open dead log lying on the ground and a mass of squiggling insects were revealed.  He poked his snout in the insect squirm and took a bite, but then literally turned up his nose and climbed up the hill for more currants.  This was a bear with a very sophisticated palette.  As he ambled up the hillside away from our view, the cars began to pull out and we followed.

We passed an area that showed signs of recent fire.  In an average year, 22 fires are started in the park by lightning.  In 1988, the year that 800,000 acres were burned inside the park, there were 50 fires started by lightning.  Black Saturday occurred on August 20, 1988 a day when hurricane force winds whipped through the park setting 165,000 acres ablaze.  Smoke plumes could be seen from the space shuttle and ashes fell as far as 100 miles away in Billings Montana.  The park is well on it’s way to recovery from the fires of 1988.  Adolescent trees cover large sections of the park while the skeletonized remains of the older trees still stand silent sentry over their younger kin.

We finally arrived at the Canyon which is carved out of yellow stone.

Hence the name of the park.

On our way back to Gardiner, we stopped at Roosevelt Lodge for dinner.  Theodore Roosevelt camped near this area during one of his visits to the park, but he did not stay in the lodge as it was built fifteen years later in 1917.

It’s the smallest lodge in the park and has a laid back atmosphere.  We were able to get a table as soon as we arrived.

The food was excellent and affordable.  Cal and Drew had elk burgers.  Ethan had catfish.  The CD and I shared a bison steak and Roosevelt beans and Jack had spaghetti and meatballs from a plain old regular cow.

I had to take a photo of the sink in the bathroom because it was so cool and maybe I was getting a little obsessed with the idea of hot and cold running water at this point in our camping vacation.

It was just so beautiful!

Soooooooo Beautiful!!!!

Here ends day three of our Yellowstone vacation.  Are you exhausted yet?  Bored?  Sick of nature?  Wishing for a comfortable bed, a modern toilet and a hot shower?  Fortunately there are only four more days to go!

Hwah ha ha hoo hee ho ha ha HWAH!

To see a larger version of any of the photos, simply click on the photo.

Evidently the rumors are true. Elk can’t read.

Photo taken at Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone National Park, July 2010

Day two of our Yellowstone/Teton vacation we drove to the top of Signal Mountain and enjoyed the panoramic view.  Signal Mountain is a little mountain that is in the middle of the ‘hole’ or the flattened our area that is surrounded by the Tetons, Yellowstone park, and a variety of other distant ranges on all sides.  This would be a view of the other ‘distant ranges’.  Sorry I don’t know what they are, but the river in the distance is the Snake River where we were to whitewater raft later in the day.

Here is my family looking all astute.

This is the Teton view from Signal Mountain which would be from the other side of the mountain.  I am pretty sure that is Jackson Lake in the distance.

On our way into Jackson to whitewater raft the Snake river, we were pulled off the road by the magnetic beauty of this building which turned out to be the Craig Thomas Visitor’s and Discovery Center.  From the road, the building was so stunning that I had to see what it looked like on the inside.

It did not disappoint.  For more photos or to learn more about the Craig Thomas Discovery and Visitor’s Center, click here.

In the photo you can see not only the massive limestone fireplace, but also a topographic map of the Teton area.  Can you see the hole in the middle of the surrounding mountain ranges?  That is how Jackson hole got it’s name.

The visitor’s center has excellent displays.  Here the boys run their fingers over the pelts of various animals that live in the Tetons.  We watched a short movie on the geographic formation of this area in the auditorium ate sandwiches out of the trunk of the van and then headed on into Jackson.

We were scheduled for an afternoon white water rafting trip so I had about fifteen minutes to walk around Jackson and snap photos before our bus left for the wilds of the Snake River.

A part of me wanted to just hang out in Jackson and skip the river entirely.

But I knew we would be back that evening to have dinner with the CD’s former nurse Ella and her husband Mike.  They had moved to Jackson only ten months prior to our visit.

So I rapidly took some photos of this extremely photogenic town and then got onto a bus with (I am not even kidding) twenty French people.  They all had wet suits on over their french bikinis.  None of the Americans had wet suits on (nor French bikinis).

“Why do we have these wet suits and no one else has them?” they asked.

No one was able to answer them, but I think it is because when you visit a foreign country, you are at the mercy of marketing even more than when you are at home.  So when someone tells you to rent a wet suit, you rent a wet suit.

Let it be a lesson to us all.

Don’t rent the wet suit until you see the natives renting the wet suit.

I was glad that I took the photos when I did, because when we got back from the river, the light was fading fast.

We walked around Jackson with Ella and Mike after we put our name in for a table at the Merry Piglets a Mexican cafe that is popular with Jackson locals.

For two days Drew had been very anxious to see a bear as he had been seeing warning signs about bears and bear proof trash cans and bear safe food storage in the campground and yet not one bear had crossed his path.  So when we saw this huge stuffed Grizzly in a store, we had to make sure that Drew saw it in case it turned out to be the only bear we saw.

And then we bought some fudge in a candy store.

And had a fabulous dinner with Mike and Ella.

Here ends day two of our Yellowstone/Teton vacation.

I did buy a water proof disposable camera and took some photos of the raft trip.  If any of the photos turn out, I will try and post a few.

Have a good weekend!

Making pink cupcakes for a baby shower,

Rechelle

She seems to be pointedly ignoring me in this photo – as if she were trying to wish me away.

I finally was able to watch this movie. I got it from Netflix.  You can watch the entire film online here.  It’s well worth the time.  I wish I could watch it with several different people that I know just for the conversation it would inspire.

This is how I deal…

This is one of my recent recovery books…

I love to read stories about home renovations/building/projects. I am pretty sure that if they offered a PhD in the subject about either ‘country life books’ or ‘books about people building or renovating a house’ I could earn it without ever setting foot onto a university campus. Because I have read all of them twice – except for this one, The House on First Street by Julia Reed.  I found it in one of my favorite sections of the library a few weeks ago and I sucked it down like a drunk just out of jail after two days in the tank.

In this book, Julia Reed, a journalist who writes for Vogue and Newsweek among other well known magazines tackles the renovation of a 6,000 square foot Greek Revival in the fabulous Garden District of New Orleans, but right in the middle of her project, Hurricane Katrina arrives and the entire book shifts course and charges into the muck and mire of post Katrina New Orleans telling the story of the storm from a very unique perspective.

Because Julia is a journalist, she was allowed back into New Orleans (after the city is evacuated) to cover the story.  She paints a picture of the aftermath of Katrina that is warm and heroic but punctuated with just enough crime and crack and bureaucratic ineptitude to keep it real.  I think if there is one word to describe this book it would be – unflinching -  because Julia describes the events that occur around her multi-million dollar house project unabashedly in the midst of a scale of human upheaval and loss that just doesn’t happen in America.  So while the poor folks in New Orleans have lost everything, are camping out at the Super Dome and being shipped to Texas to live in FEMA apartments and while the working class, the waiters, the bus boys, and the dishwashers at all of Julia’s favorite upscale restaurants are trying to find a school to enroll their kids in and find out if there is anything left of their homes, Julia is sitting high and dry in the Garden District, throwing back lobster and champagne, pissed off that her contractor failed to fix the roof on the sun room of her mansion which has now leaked all over her custom made sisal rug.

But Julia recognizes her situation for what it is.  She diligently jumps in to help the city, tell the story to the American public, feed the workforce that is cleaning up and maintaining order in the city, as well as making sure everyone who ever worked for her, cooked for her and cleaned for her is taken care of – even if it means hiring a lawyer to bail them out of jail over and over again.  Julia is a good person who just happens to be extremely rich and if her book is anything close to the truth (and who really knows with an autobiography) it is very difficult not to wish you knew her personally by the end of it.

Thanks to Nanne for leaving the link to Julia’s house.  You can see photos of her home at Visual Vamp.

“Why don’t we just go to the lake or rent a condo on a beach somewhere?” I said.   “It seems like we are always trying to impress someone with our vacations. Who exactly are we trying to impress and what do we get when we impress them enough and how do we know when we’ve reached the critical ‘impressed enough’ quota so we can go to the beach?”

He didn’t have an answer to my question.

It reminded me of when we were in Europe and after a couple of days of frantically marching from one side of London to the other and back again according to the frantic pace that my husband set,  I asked him a similar question.

“What is going on here?” I said, “Are we on a scavenger hunt with a million dollar prize at the end?”

He also did not answer that question either.

Which reminds me!

Yellowstone is kind of like visiting Europe.

There really aren’t very many Americans in the park.  Especially in the parts where you have to climb steep metal steps to get to a waterfall or climb the side of a mountain to see a waterfall or hike around a lake on a path that is strewn with huge boulders to see a waterfall.  Every path in Yellowstone eventually leads to a waterfall or to a geyser than will never go off while you are there.  But you will generally find only Europeans and Asians at the end of these arduous paths – and our family.  The rest of the Americans at Yellowstone are shopping in the gift shops or eating at the lodge cafeteria… or at Disneyland.

Is that the problem?

Is my husband simply a European?

Then why the hell am I living in Kansas!

It was especially hard to miss the hordes of French-speaking people who were crammed into every crack and crevasse in the park. Everywhere we went … more French people. “Hey!” I wanted to tell them, ” I went to your country last year!  Remember me? I was the one who wanted a French glass bottle of coke but you wouldn’t give me one because I ordered it at the bar instead of sitting at one of tables outside on the patio where every item on the menu mysteriously costs more? Remember?  Hey guess what! In America coke costs the same no matter where you sit. So maybe you should take that idea back with you to your country and stop being so mean to Americans when they try to speak your language and fail badly!  All I wanted was a coke!  A coke!  It’s not like I was asking for you to saw a piece off the Eiffel Tower and gift wrap it for me!”

But I didn’t say that.

I just smiled at them and listened to the music of their language and the pretty names of their children and remembered when we visited the Eiffel Tower and I watched all the Asians and Europeans and my sons and husband climb the stairs to the top while I hunted around for a gift shop and a cafeteria at the bottom.

As you may know, the Country Doctor and I have very different philosophies when it comes to vacations. When I think of a vacation, I think of sitting on a deck or perhaps a veranda with a beverage and a book, overlooking a beach or maybe a mountain or maybe a body of water. I eat food that others have prepared. I sleep in a bed that someone else has made. I pee in a toilet that someone else has cleaned. Only good food or great coffee or large glasses of booze will lure me from this spot.  There is no pop-up camper in my vacation picture and I am not cooking over a propane stove worrying that it is going to explode and wondering if the next campsite might possibly offer the thin luxury of a hot shower.

My husband views vacations as triathlons, disguised as dissertations, disguised as a climbs to the top of Mount Everest, disguised as relief work in Haiti, disguised as brain surgery, disguised as Rubik’s cubes, disguised as training for every event in the Olympics at the same time.  And then, in order to make my husband extra happy on vacation, we also have to pretend like we are poor.  Really, really poor.  Like we are homeless, and have only ninety five cents left in mama’s greasy paper sack hidden insider her grand-mammy’s thread bare quilt where all the babies was born.  Any type of purchase is regarded as a sign of weakness and results in a public shunning.

If my husband is happy on vacation, I am languishing near the point of death and if I am happy, the Country Doctor is hunting around for a razor blade so that he can slit his wrists.

Here is how it all played out…

We borrowed a friend’s pop-up camper for this little adventure.  It was nice to not have to sleep in a tent on the ground for seven days and I was able to comfort myself occasionally with the idea that a grizzly bear might have a harder time breaking into a pop-up and eating one of my kids as opposed to breaking into a tent and eating one of my kids.  But then I would look at the fabric walls surrounding my children while they slept in the pop-up and my comfort zone would rapidly deteriorate.

Crossing into Nebraska where the sign describes it as ‘The good life”.

Authentic Mexican cuisine in a little hole-in-the-wall cafe halfway through Nebraska. Good cheap food making both the CD and I both happy at the same time.

We drove all night to reach the Tetons starting out at around 2 p.m. in Kansas and arriving at our campsite in Wyoming around 7:30 a.m the next morning.  That’s eighteen hours of driving.  The Country Doctor was coming off  24 hours of call, so I drove almost the entire way.  I saw lots of elk and deer in the middle of the night in the mountains of Wyoming.  One of them was just standing in the middle of the road staring me down.  When I saw him I didn’t swerve the car, but kept it pointed straight towards the deer, slamming on the breaks managing to slow down just in time.  The deer watched me come to a halt and then moseyed off the highway as if he were disappointed that we all survived.  I kept seeing deer all night long in ones, twos and sometimes small groups wearing lots of leather, metal studs and covered in tatoos.  They were gathered around a keg in the ditch of the road.  Or maybe I was just hallucinating from having driven fourteen hours straight.   I slowed down to forty or fifty miles an hour wanting to be able to stop if one of those wild party deer decided to spring out in front of the van.  There were dark looming mountains piling up all around me and I was really hoping to watch the sun come up as I drove, but right as the light started to change from black to silvery gray, I knew I had to stop.  After fifteen hours of driving, I woke up the CD and he took over.  He got to see the sun come up in the mountains.  I fell asleep as soon as I sat down in the passenger’s seat and didn’t wake up until the CD was purchasing a pass from the ranger’s station into Grand Teton National Park.

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I really wanted to stay at the Jenny Lake campground in Grand Teton as it was my favorite stop during our honeymoon, but Jenny Lake is a ‘tent only’ campsite.  So we camped up the road at Signal Mountain which is also nice, but has a ‘lake vibe’ as opposed to a ‘mountain vibe’ and was filled with recreational vehicles that ran their generators off and on all day long.  It didn’t really matter though.  There’s no hanging out in the campground if you are on vacation with the Country Doctor.

After eighteen hours of driving and then setting up our campsite, we immediately headed to Jenny Lake for a hike.  I was anxious to see if it was as beautiful as I remembered.

It was…

We hiked around the lake.

The boys found Wyoming’s version of a bridge to nowhere.

The hike took a few hours and although it wasn’t a super hard hike, we were all pretty tired by the end.

Well – all of us except for the Country Doctor.

He wanted to hike back, but once I saw a sign that said we could catch the boat back across the lake, there was only one way I was getting back to camp.  And it wasn’t on foot sister.

Besides!  The boat offered an entirely different perspective of the Tetons!

So see!

It was a meaningful choice after all!

Next stop was the Jenny Lake store.

I had left both the bread and the coffee for our trip sitting on the kitchen counter at home as I was very concerned that the bread would get smooshed and wanted to pack it last and that the coffee would get lost and I can’t deal with lost coffee first thing in the morning.  Instead, I ended up leaving them both behind.  So I spent a few minutes shopping in this store.  I could have spent an hour.  In fact, I could have spent the entire vacation there.  I want to work there.  I want to be the coffee attendant at the Jenny Lake store.

So far this was turning out to be a fantastic vacation!  I had visited my favorite spot on our honeymoon.  I had hiked, but managed to ride a boat back and now I was shopping in a cute, woodsy camp store and clutching a cup of hot coffee to boot!  I love this vacation!  This is the best vacation ever!

These are the Grand Tetons as we drove back to our campsite.  Grand Tetons means big boobs.  A couple of French men came up with the name.

Those French people are all over this place!

We then went back to our campsite, had some lunch and took naps.

And for our evening’s entertainment we decided to drive into Yellowstone.

We walked around the West Thumb Geyser basin which is by far the prettiest of all the geothermal areas at the park.  It”s on the lake and there are some trees so it doesn’t feel quite so inhospitable and ‘died and gone to Hades’ like the other geothermal areas tend to do.

This is one of the famous fishing cones where fisherman ‘back in the day’ before Yellowstone was a huge tourist attraction, would stand and catch a fish in the lake and then turn around and boil their fish right on the line in the simmering water that is inside of the cone.  Those fisherman were clearly the Country Doctor’s ancestors.

Here is one of what seems like thousands of pretty hot pools of water colored by various minerals and bacteria that litter the landscape of Yellowstone.  Some of the bacteria that grow in these simmering pools only exist in that one particular pool.  They are found nowhere else on the face of the earth.  In fact there aren’t any geothermal features anywhere in the world that have been as well preserved and are therefore still producing interesting and useful organisms like those in Yellowstone.  This is probably because the geothermal features at Yellowstone have not been tampered with for commercial use.  Some of the bacteria they have found in Yellowstone hot pools have been used in the medical diagnosis of AIDS and forensic science such as DNA fingerprinting.

Then we drove to see Old Faithful.

When we arrived, people were already congregating waiting for the next eruption.

We joined them.

After watching Old Faithful we walked around Yellowstone Lodge a bit.

Jack bought a wolf in the Lodge gift shop.

We shunned him.

Then we drove over to Yellowstone Inn and inquired about dinner reservations.

We discovered that the only dinner slots left over the next three days at Yellowstone Inn were after 9:30 pm.

We bought the kids some ice cream instead.

The Country Doctor passed.

And then he shunned all of us.

And I bought an eight dollar plastic cup full of wine.

“Do I get a free refill?”  I asked the bartender.

She didn’t answer me.

I think she was French.

While my kids text-ed their friends back home, I drank my wine and soaked up the atmosphere in this beautiful old building and then we drove back to the campsite and ate sandwiches.  Except I didn’t eat anything.  I just went straight to bed.  I was so tired I couldn’t even summon the will to worry about bears breaking in to the pop-up and dragging one of my babies off for a midnight snack.  And that is pretty darned tired for me.

On our last day in Wyoming…

We rode horses up into the mountains outside of Cody.

We met a mule train coming down as we were going up.

Strangely, I never noticed the mules.