Grammar

Young Adventurer is describing to Grandpa the various phonograms for "ough"--there are six ways to pronounce that, in case you didn't know.

Grandpa Larry, not wanting to be outdone, says, "what is the genitive ablative for something-or-another, thinking to throw around his superior knowledge of Greek and thereby outwit the Youth. Venom, sitting quietly in Grandpa's lap, hears this and says, "There can't be a genitive ablative. Those are two different cases."

There are two phonograms for "ow."

Not having taken greek or latin, and not knowing phonograms by memory, I apologize for any misspellings in this post.

Little Cabin in the Woods

Young Adventurer wasn't sure he wanted to be anywhere but home on his birthday, but he changed his mind when we got here!

Games of Monopoly are a tradition at this place, which was once named "Mountain Mortgage"

Adventurer Two and Grandpa battled it out in this game, but Grandpa was defeated. Possibly for the first time ever.

Kissing Babies

You know, I had some comments written here, but the photos are better without them.

Another Animal Photo from Yellowstone

Look close--you can see it's teeth.

Have you ever seen the teeth of one the Uinta Ground Squirrel?

Laughing!

I need to read up on it a little, maybe, but I am wondering about this face recognition stuff in the new iPhoto. I have identified each of my children several times now, but it keeps labeling them "unnamed." I am not sure what this means. Their names do not seem to be sticking.

Maybe they all look alike to people and computers other than myself?

They don't look alike at all, do they? I mean, if you were iPhoto, wouldn't you be able to tell their faces apart?

The Macbook is out of the box

I love the keyboard.

Mooses

I didn't get any particularly wonderful moose photos on our vacation, but on the Yellowstone forum, some people have posted these. They made me smile.

Ebenezer

I woke up this morning with the words, "like a fetter" in my head. Knowing it was words from a hymn I searched my ipod for the song I thought it was and couldn't find either the song or the words. Finally I did what anyone would do and Googled the words. They are indeed from the hymn I had thought. Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing. Thank you, Wikipedia. It wasn't in my iTunes. Danjo the Magnificent had been guitaring it last night, apparently. He likes to play from the hymnal. I didn't notice then, but something in my brain did.

Anyway, that hymn also contains the line, "here I raise mine Ebenezer" and since I wasn't sure what it was referring to, I had to look that up also. it means, "stone of help" and has to do with God defeating Israel's enemies, again.

Then Samuel took a large stone and set it up between Mizpah and Shen. He named it Ebenezer, saying, "Thus far has the Lord helped us!"

1 Samuel 7:12

While I was looking, I came across two articles that I enjoyed, one about Ebenezer and one on worship, which mentions "Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing." Sometimes when we work at figuring out what those strange words mean instead of finding something simpler, we learn something. And then I found one more article. It's longer, but really good.

Hey. I brought my family on vacation too!

What kids do when Old Faithful area isn't crowded:

Near some hot springs on the one sunny day.

This I think is Great Fountain Geyser. We drove up while it was erupting. Good timing. We had been told there was a 4 hour window in which it could erupt. In this photo, it's about done.

On some boardwalk somewhere

I think these two like being sisters, most of the time

Young Adventurer at Jenny Lake

Later in the trip Young Adventurer decided he didn't want his picture taken. I had to get creative to catch him looking at the camera at all. This time he was so happy about running through the overspray from the geyser that he didn't mind. He named the wolf "Ash"

Don't Mess With Venom

So, at the park this evening a couple of boys thought it would be cool fill cups and small squirt guns with water at the drinking fountain and throw the water at the other kids at the park. After putting up with it for a while, Venom was fed up. She grabbed a Powerade bottle, got M. to cut the top off with a pocket knife, and headed to the drinking fountain herself while the boys were busy tossing another cup of water on her friend. She proceeded to fill the bottle, sneak up on the boys, and douse one herself.

Problem solved.

Sorry. No photo.

Even more photos from Wyoming

I really liked these places. And nothing terribly exciting is happening at home right now. I haven't had my camera out. So, here's more of Yellowstone and Grand Teton.

Sunrise at Oxbow bend. This place was very pretty and very peaceful. There were lots of biting insects in the evening though. We smashed several inside the car.

This gal was hanging out very close to the road just after sunrise. Also in Grand Teton.

Don't mess with the marmots. This fellow had just driven off another marmot after a skirmish just feet away from me and my camera. They look cute. They are not afraid of anyone. I don't trust them.

This is one of my very favorite shots of the entire trip.

The blue pools are the really hot ones. So hot that most bacteria and algae can't grow in them.

More Reflections on Yellowstone

The following are some interesting "signs" we saw during our visit to Yellowstone. 

This first sign is common near hot springs and geysers. Some are signed more elaborately. They have long descriptions of why the ground is unstable, how hot and acidic the water is, and how many people have been maimed or killed by disregarding basic geyser basin safety or by being unlucky. Some signs even contain graphic illustrations of children falling through the thin crust of ground and into the seething springs of boiling acid water below. This one is more simple.

The interesting thing is that the animals tend to disregard the signs, evidenced by their footprints and droppings all over the geyser and hot spring areas, as shown below. Also evidenced by the "macabre," according to our guidebook,  story of the young bison which fell into a hot spring, leaving a lingering smell of beef soup for a week.

The next photo is the petrified tree of Yellowstone. Note how it is surrounded by a fence and locked gate. This tree used to be three trees, but people, who can't keep their hands off God's special trees, reduced the three trees to just this one. Hence the fence, so in our more sensible moments, we protect creation from ourselves.

So this one is just funny. It was pretty big:

We laughed the most about this one, but we were disappointed. It was supposed to be a nice drive:

Five Random Photos from today

Yes, the first one is Old Faithful, not erupting. We did see it erupt--twice. But I said these were random photos. You are on your own for the rest.

Here we are again!

Grand Teton is the more modern of these two national parks. Yellowstone has no wifi within the park unless you are some sort of hacker. So we have been "isolated" here with the very manageable throngs of people for two whole days now. I think. This hotel room seems like it is tilted. Not sure if that is because it really is tilted, or because we were that tired. The rest of the family is snoozing as I type. We have walked a lot (in the rain, mostly) and seen a ton of things. 

I have no idea how to choose photos to post. I have taken a ton and even though half of them at least are terrible blurry shots of distant animals, some are really good. I'll just pick a few and you will have to wait for the rest.

Our last day in Grand Teton, we got up very early and looked for wildlife. We found lots of elk, but no moose. I really wanted to see a moose. It was not so rainy earlier in the day, so we went to Hidden Falls. There was snow up there! Young Adventurer liked that. Then we drove around doing some other sightseeing. We drove up through a construction zone into Yellowstone later in the day. It was getting wetter and wetter by then. We encountered a frozen lake and a lot of snow in the higher elevations. We also visited the Thumb Geysers and some other stuff on our way up to Mammoth Hot Springs area. We ate dinner at Canyon and then drove over the Dunraven pass, where it was snowing! Young Adventurer was elated! He had never seen it snow. We got to Mammoth after dark--very late.

We slept in the next morning and then went down toward Norris to go see "Thermal Features" and such. The family favorite was the Artist Paint Pots. We did several miles of walking all told but it was fun.

Today we woke up really really early and drove out to Lamar Valley looking for more wildlife. We had been steadily checking off our list of all the animals we could see on the trip. For a while all we saw was elk and bison way off in the distance. There were some baby bison, but too far off to see well. Finally, nearly to Silver Gate, we saw a bull moose way off in the distance. I was pleased because I really wanted to see a moose. Did I say that already?

A little further on, we hit the jackpot--a momma moose and her baby lying in a little glade not far from the road! We ate breakfast and watched her with one other guy. I was coveting his camera setup. Finally they stood up, and all the other people started stopping and taking out more cameras for me to covet. It was really neat though. I took about a hundred blurry photos and got a couple of sort of reasonable ones. Then we drove to Cooke City because Danjo and I were desparate for coffee, and had a good, expensive breakfast in a place where the restroom was in the basement, literally. Young Adventurer noted that they had a Christmas tree down there. Then we headed back and saw lots and lots of other cool stuff. The best way to sum it up is that God is very creative. We've seen almost every animal we could conceive of seeing here, including a snake, two bears, and several very interesting birds--even what we think was a  trumpeter swan way off in the distance--HUGE! We've also seen some pretty crazy landscape, a petrified tree surrounded by a fence so man, who just can't resist temptation,  will not destroy what God has created, and lots of indescribable things. Tomorrow, Old Faithful. 

I will tell you what the photos are below, and then, goodnight! They were in order but I added more and now they are not. 

Mammoth Hot Springs today after the sun finally made an appearance. This was not my favorite place, but I may have gotten my favorite photo here. This is not it.

Amazonian Mud Pot at Artist Paint Pots. 

Adventurers really loved this nasty vat of gurgling mud.

Sunrise at Grand Teton. 

Grand Teton was more peaceful and less crowded than Yellowstone. I liked it a lot.

For anyone who is still unsure about how to photograph children petting bison.

It's snowing!! Someone said they had closed this pass by the next morning. When we drove through there was lots of old snow, but the new snow wasn't sticking.

Danjo the Magnificent and the kids chucking rocks onto the frozen Lewis Lake

Mommy Moose and her baby. 

I think this is part of the grand canyon of Yellowstone. It was somewhere south of Tower Falls I think. We tried to go for a walk but it was raining and too muddy. I think there was a bear nearby too. Remind me to tell the story. 

Urban Ranger, this is for you. 

A black bear in a green pasture. 

There are lots of green pastures here. This one was on a steep hill.

What do I win?

This is a beaver!! Really! We saw him (at least we think it was him) yesterday, but we couldn't tell if it was a beaver or a muskrat. We drove by the same spot again today so we got out and looked again. Sure enough, Mr or Mrs. Beaver was there, and this time we could see the tail. Now we know this is Narnia! We didn't see Beaversdam, but we did see beaver's house. Yes, I took a picture of that too, but I am not posting it. Wait till I get home.

I do have tons of pictures of elk and bison. Nice and up close. Elk with racks of velvety antlers. Bison eyelashes. A marmot fight. A family of geese. More.  Even though I covet a better camera, mine's not bad. :-)

WiFi means photos!!

First, Mr. Grizzly. We saw him late yesterday afternoon coming down the road toward us. We pulled off and started taking pictures. The light was not good and none of the pictures are great, but here he is. He walked down the road past our car on the other side of the street.

The first bison (in Southern Utah):

Friends!

Raining when we arrived in Grand Teton

Lots of Elk. This isn't the best pic-it's still in the camera

Sunset at Oxbow Bend

We got up early this morning (very early) and went looking for moose. We didn't find any, only lots of elk and a beautiful sunrise. More photos to follow eventually. We also succeeded in making sleepy kids very grumpy, so we took them back to the cabin and went back to sleep for a while. We're ready now for some hiking and the drive up to Yellowstone.