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We took a trip into the park, walked a good ways up to lonestar geyser. It rained a bit, but the hike was super nice. This picture is the Firehole River after the rain, and a dip in temperature.

This is a mineral deposit/spring on the Firehole near lonestar geyser.

These are Bison, Bison crossing the Madison.

Well, him, he’s just Greg, and that’s Steph hiding her crying face in shame and disappointment, or laughing.

This is their four-month-old Sonja, bouncing in the threshold between our living room and kitchen. She sure knows how to bounce, that Sonja.

We took the Schwesers into the park, and took a short hike around some geyser basin, maybe Artists Paintpot? It was great to have the Schwesers here to share their first family vacation with us. It’s neat to see them with a kid, and great to be able to share this place with people we care about.

And then blow them up.

Oh god, aren’t we just adorable. This one’s for the family.

We finally got around to watching this Old Faithful geyser shoot some hot water way up in the sky. After all of our visits to Yellowstone, this is the first time we’ve seen it go off. It was raining, and we got beers and wines from the Old Faithful Lodge, sat on their beautiful back porch in rocking chairs made from roughly hewn pine branches. Not a bad way to spend an hour or so.

We had a picnic, and this fellow waltzed right up to show off his newly grown, and velvet covered antlers. They’re still growing, but they’re actually pretty big for this time of year.

It’s hard to take a bad picture of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. While that shot is pretty impressive, the scale of the canyon is something to behold in person.

So, that was last weekend. Greg and Steph were here from Wednesday evening to Monday morning. We had a normal work week, with some good fishing thrown in, and today (Friday) we went out to fish the Firehole Canyon. We were hoping we could find some of the elusive Salmonflies.

They found us. These guys, Pteronarcys californica, live underwater for two to four years, before hatching into giant winged bugs, with one thing on their mind. I mean, what would you want to do after four years under a cold river?

They hang out on banks, drying their wings, and looking for… err, a date. After the “date” the female returns to the river, to deposit newly fertilized eggs she’s mysteriously acquired, where she becomes a moving, fluttering target for hungry trout.

Thats where we come in. We both caught some fish, and agree that this stretch of river is one of the most beautiful places we’ve ever been, much lessed fished.

We finished off our evening, with some delicious buffalo burgers, and some locally brewed beer. It’s been a pretty good couple of weeks.

edit: larger versions available here, for some reason I can’t get the above photos to link up properly.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 31st, 2007 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Dispatches from West Yellowstone, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.