4th of July

Island Park

Mesa Falls

West Yellowstone

We had fun over the 4th of July. Rick, Kolten and I went camping with Phil & Melissa and their kids to Island park. We ended up spending one of the days going to West Yellowstone to see the hot springs and Old Faithful and got some great pics. Take a look.

Below is Mesa Falls.

These next few photos were of Phil fly fishing. We got up at 5 in the morning to go fishing in Island Park and didn't catch a thing. If you zoom in on the picture below you can see Phil way in the back getting ready to get in the water to fish.

The only thing Philly caught was a glimps of the breath-taking view of the lake.

This was a view of the lake right when we first got there at 5-5:30am. Steam was still rising off the water.

This bison was staring at an old lady that was probably 30 feet away taking it's picture. Rick kept saying, "Hurry, get the camera! I want to get a picture of that lady when she gets gored." She was so dumb. There was no way she was going to get away if that thing decided it was going to charge her. You would think people would wonder if they might be protective of their calves.
And, yes, we have a zoom on our camera. There was no way I was getting that close to these things.

As we were leaving for the day, we saw some bison walking across the geysers so I made Rick pull over to take some photos. The photo below is deceiving, it looks like it was really cold that day but it's actually just hot springs steaming in the background and the ground had turned white from the hot spring water. I bet it was probably still 75-80 degrees out that night.

This was a sign that they posted near one of the walking paths saying don't jump into the hot pools because it might burn you. Rick thought it was hillarious. I guess he figured if you were too stupid to figure that out yourself than you deserve to get burned.

Below is a pic of our cute little nephew, Dillon.

This was a close up of the ripples the water made from the hot springs.

You might think that these next few photos are of a lake but these are actually photos of about a quarter of an inch of hot spring water trickling across the ground.




There were the most amazing colors throughout the park. The ground in places looked like marble.
This little stream was a yellow-green and the ground around it was colored the same and then would fade out to oranges, reds, browns and greens. I think Yellowstone is so interestingly (if that's a word) gorgeous.




The next couple of pictures below are of the fireplace in the Yellowstone Lodge.

While inside the lodge, there was a squirl that came in through the doors and was running around eating crumbs off the floor.

You can't see it very well but it ran right under my legs.

As usual, Rick and Kolten were messing around on the walking paths next to the hot springs when they weren't suppose to. Maybe that sign was posted for them???!!!