Our New Place

September 22nd, 2008 by Brennan

To those of you that have checked for posts, I know we have been terrible about putting up new ones. Sorry abut that, we just sort of got out of the habit. In any case, summer has just flown by, with its ups and downs. On the up side of things, we have moved into a new place! We now have a place outside of town in an area called Horse Butte.

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Our living room, still in need of some furniture.

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The view from the front window.

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The Kitchen

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Gus isn’t so sure about the dirty paws blockade.

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Looking out our kitchen window. Im the spring we will have a lot of Bison in our backyard as Horse Butte is a prime calving ground for them. We are interested to see how Gus and Bucket feel about that.

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A look from our back door. All of the land behind our house is national forest, so we only have to walk out the back door to take the dogs for a walk.

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Brennan’s Office

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The view from Brennan’s Office.

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Another look at the Living Room.

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Two of the houses on the street we are on belong to my winter co-workers, so we already know the neighbors!

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Well, that’s our new place. We are really excited about it, a big improvement. We even have multiple rooms! We’ll try and put up some photos from the summer months sometime soon! Until next time…

Out like a Lion, in like a Grizzly Bear?

May 6th, 2008 by Rachel

Well, looking at our pictures I see we haven’t put up a post in a while, so this one will cover some lost weeks for you. Winter was starting to get the best of us… long, cold, and more snow than we had ever seen. As March rolled around, I kept waiting for signs of spring, but they were not in the foreseeable future, more snow, and still quite cold.

Brennan got to leave town come the beginning of April and saw a bit of warm weather out in the mitt, but here I sat waiting and waiting. It’s now early May and the snow has significantly melted but there is still quite a bit of snow on the ground in most places. I’d reached a point of disbelief that winter was ever going to end but I’m going to take a cue from the local bears here who are coming out of their long sleep and trust them that spring is finally here.

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This shot goes back a couple of months to a snowmobile trip that we took into the park with some friends. Luckily, there isn’t that much snow on the ground anymore!

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A lot of bison have died this season, here is one we came across while skiing along the Madison in the park.

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Elk in the Winter.

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A look at Mammoth under lots of snow

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Mammoth Terraces

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Bucket’s photo shoot

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Here’s Gus posing on a sunny afternoon. Unfortunately our family, human and dog, seem to have serious knee issues. Gus has also torn his ACL and has to have surgery!

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The first day Yellowstone reopened for the summer season, we took a walk around Norris. It’s great to see these places change throughout the seasons. In the winter the colors in the geyser basins tend to be a little more muted as there is less sunlight for the sun-loving organisms living here to photosynthesize.

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Snow carved out by a thermal feature.

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With all the winter kills in the park, you stand a chance of seeing other wildlife enjoying the buffet. We watched these two coyotes for a while.

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This is where we have spent a good deal of our time recently. Snowshoes are a necessity here!

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In case you missed pictures of us holding fish, I’ve thrown a few in for you. You wouldn’t know it from the picture, but this is supposedly “spring”!

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A really nice Brown.

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Brennan with another nice Brown.

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Here’s Gus getting into the playoff spirit. Go Wings!

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The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

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Walking in Porcelain Basin.

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On an afternoon drive in the park, we were lucky enough to come across two grizzly bears, this guy here was really close! Truly amazing to see.

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Well, hope that makes up for the lack of posts for a while. We are off tomorrow to get Gus all fixed up in Billings, the hard part will be keeping him calm for six weeks… Wish us luck!