The day we left Boise was beautifully clear. Our main destination for the day: Craters of the Moon National Monument in south-central Idaho. This fantastic landscape was formed some thousands of years ago as lava poured out from cracks in the ground, running over the flat lava plains of southern Idaho. Here is one view of these old flows:
There are also interesting plants and animals that live in this area, including limber pine. This gnarly species is not unique to Craters of the Moon, but is probably the most common tree is this harsh landscape. Below is a picture of a dead limber pine, its branches distorted by heavy mistletoe infestation:
This tree was deliberately poisoned by park staff to try to staunch the mistletoe (yes, the same parasitic plant that people pucker up under during Christmas) infestation. Nowadays, they recognize it as a natural occurrence, and leave the trees alone. In the picture below, Hope and the kids look into one of several "spatter" cones formed during the eruption:
and here is another view of the lava covered landscape from the top of one of these cones:
There are also old lava "tubes" in parts of the park. Lava tubes form when the lava hardens on the outside, but stays molten and flowing on the inside. After all the lava leaves, a cave is formed from these hollow tubes. We hiked into a couple of these, which are noticeably cooler and damper than the hot, dry lands above. Kenny was thrilled to be exploring this new area:
that was until he slipped and scraped his knee on a jagged stone. A little blood and a few tears later, he bravely limped out to the van for some cleaning and a band-aid. After several fun-filled hours at Craters of the Moon, we drove on to our hotel in
Rexburg, Idaho, about 2 hours southwest of Yellowstone. When we arrived, we found that the airport just a few blocks away was having an air show the next day, and some of the pilots were out practicing:
(This plane was using a smoke generator). We would have liked to have attended, but the need to leave early the next day for Yellowstone kept us from doing so... The next morning (Saturday), we headed up to Yellowstone, even though the cloudy skies were threatening. Much of the west has been getting a lot more rain than usual for the spring and summer, and this area was no exception. Rain or shine, our goal was Yellowstone, and we continued on through West Yellowstone, Montana, and entered the park from the west side. Good fortune was with us early in the day, as the clouds parted and the sun shined on the mountains and occasional wildlife like this bison sauntering down the highway:
We visited a number of geyser basins and hot springs:
One of my favorite spots in the park is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River and the large waterfalls that cascade into it. Kenny and I hiked down a short but very steep trail (many switchbacks) to a nice overlook of one of these falls on the Yellowstone River:
We also witnessed something this trip that we had never seen before in this area: a grizzly bear in the wild! We were driving through a large grassland called the Hayden Valley and noticed a lot of cars parked along the road--a sure sign of wildlife. We figured it may be a moose or elk at first, but as we got closer, we thought the crowd was too big--it had to be something more special. Our next thought was perhaps a wolf--this area is well-known for wolf sightings. Nope! Something even more interesting... The bear was a few hundred yards from the road, and our camera's zoom lens doesn't do it justice:
Using a computer program to zoom in on this bear confirmed its species: grizzlies have a large "hump" on their front shoulder, while black bears do not:
We continued onward after snapping a picture or two, not wanting to add onto the traffic jam. We drove on to Yellowstone Lake, which Kenny insisted on dipping his toes in:
The snow in the mountains above the lake are good indicators of how cold it was--so is Kenny's face! While Kenny attended a ranger program to earn his Yellowstone junior ranger patch, I took Stephen and Beth outside to play. Here's Beth hamming it up on stage:
We continued onward, stopping at several other geothermal features along the way:
That's Kenny in the steam. He's wearing a rain coat not because of the steam, but because the clouds started closing in and it started to rain. Having spent most of the day in Yellowstone, we headed to
Driggs, Idaho, to our next hotel. This site was chosen because of its close proximity to the
Teton Mountains and Jackson Hole, our destination for the next day. We were worried, because the forecast continued to call for the chance of rain, and the mountains were largely obscured by clouds as we arrived in
Driggs. It rained a good portion of the night, but the clouds started to break up some as we headed out Sunday morning for Jackson, Wyoming. After a nice service at the beautiful Catholic church in Jackson, we headed for Grand
Teton National Park. While we visited, the clouds never fully left and there was a stiff, cool breeze, but the skies were clear enough for some nice scenic pictures, like this one of Beth:
We spent several hours in the Jackson Hole area before turning southward towards Logan, Utah, our destination for my next meeting. On the way, we made a quick swing past a Forest Service guard station that we lived at one summer while working on the Bridger-
Teton National Forest at the beginning of my grad work at Utah State:
The moose in the picture above is a sculpture. We stayed at the guard station located above the highest visible buildings in the picture (above the moose). People would
paraglide off the mountain (Beaver Mountain) on the left side of the picture. We arrived in Logan around supper time and checked into our hotel. We were less than thrilled with this hotel (ask me about it later), so this morning (Monday) we checked out before my meeting on the Utah State University campus--I had made reservations at a much nicer hotel Sunday night, after we decided not to stay there any longer. My meeting (the North American Forest Ecology Workshop) will run the rest of the week (I speak on Thursday morning). After checking into our new hotel this afternoon, we had dinner at a local Mexican restaurant we used to like going to when we were students here. We then drove up Logan Canyon to a scenic spot in the mountains. This site is near a small lake and has a lot of spruce, fir, and aspen timber. The kids were happy, because it was high enough to still have snow in patches:
After an hour or so of breathing the fresh, clean mountain air and throwing a few snowballs, we headed back down to Logan, and drove around the city a bit to look at places we used to live at or go to. Here is the view of Logan from the west side of Cache Valley:
Logan Canyon is the gap on the right. The big mountain on the right of Logan Canyon is Mount Logan:
The tall structure on the bottom center part of the photograph, just sticking up to the base of the mountains is Old Main on the Utah State University campus. What a spectacular place to go to college! We'll spend the bulk of this week in the Logan area, and start heading back to Monticello by Friday at the latest.
The day we left Boise was beautifully clear. Our main destination for the day: Craters of the Moon National Monument in south-central Idaho. This fantastic landscape was formed some thousands of years ago as lava poured out from cracks in the ground, running over the flat lava plains of southern Idaho. Here is one view of these old flows:
There are also interesting plants and animals that live in this area, including limber pine. This gnarly species is not unique to Craters of the Moon, but is probably the most common tree is this harsh landscape. Below is a picture of a dead limber pine, its branches distorted by heavy mistletoe infestation:
This tree was deliberately poisoned by park staff to try to staunch the mistletoe (yes, the same parasitic plant that people pucker up under during Christmas) infestation. Nowadays, they recognize it as a natural occurrence, and leave the trees alone. In the picture below, Hope and the kids look into one of several "spatter" cones formed during the eruption:
and here is another view of the lava covered landscape from the top of one of these cones:
There are also old lava "tubes" in parts of the park. Lava tubes form when the lava hardens on the outside, but stays molten and flowing on the inside. After all the lava leaves, a cave is formed from these hollow tubes. We hiked into a couple of these, which are noticeably cooler and damper than the hot, dry lands above. Kenny was thrilled to be exploring this new area:
that was until he slipped and scraped his knee on a jagged stone. A little blood and a few tears later, he bravely limped out to the van for some cleaning and a band-aid. After several fun-filled hours at Craters of the Moon, we drove on to our hotel in Rexburg, Idaho, about 2 hours southwest of Yellowstone. When we arrived, we found that the airport just a few blocks away was having an air show the next day, and some of the pilots were out practicing:
(This plane was using a smoke generator). We would have liked to have attended, but the need to leave early the next day for Yellowstone kept us from doing so... The next morning (Saturday), we headed up to Yellowstone, even though the cloudy skies were threatening. Much of the west has been getting a lot more rain than usual for the spring and summer, and this area was no exception. Rain or shine, our goal was Yellowstone, and we continued on through West Yellowstone, Montana, and entered the park from the west side. Good fortune was with us early in the day, as the clouds parted and the sun shined on the mountains and occasional wildlife like this bison sauntering down the highway: 
We visited a number of geyser basins and hot springs:
One of my favorite spots in the park is the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone River and the large waterfalls that cascade into it. Kenny and I hiked down a short but very steep trail (many switchbacks) to a nice overlook of one of these falls on the Yellowstone River:
We also witnessed something this trip that we had never seen before in this area: a grizzly bear in the wild! We were driving through a large grassland called the Hayden Valley and noticed a lot of cars parked along the road--a sure sign of wildlife. We figured it may be a moose or elk at first, but as we got closer, we thought the crowd was too big--it had to be something more special. Our next thought was perhaps a wolf--this area is well-known for wolf sightings. Nope! Something even more interesting... The bear was a few hundred yards from the road, and our camera's zoom lens doesn't do it justice:
Using a computer program to zoom in on this bear confirmed its species: grizzlies have a large "hump" on their front shoulder, while black bears do not:
We continued onward after snapping a picture or two, not wanting to add onto the traffic jam. We drove on to Yellowstone Lake, which Kenny insisted on dipping his toes in:
The snow in the mountains above the lake are good indicators of how cold it was--so is Kenny's face! While Kenny attended a ranger program to earn his Yellowstone junior ranger patch, I took Stephen and Beth outside to play. Here's Beth hamming it up on stage:
We continued onward, stopping at several other geothermal features along the way:
That's Kenny in the steam. He's wearing a rain coat not because of the steam, but because the clouds started closing in and it started to rain. Having spent most of the day in Yellowstone, we headed to Driggs, Idaho, to our next hotel. This site was chosen because of its close proximity to the Teton Mountains and Jackson Hole, our destination for the next day. We were worried, because the forecast continued to call for the chance of rain, and the mountains were largely obscured by clouds as we arrived in Driggs. It rained a good portion of the night, but the clouds started to break up some as we headed out Sunday morning for Jackson, Wyoming. After a nice service at the beautiful Catholic church in Jackson, we headed for Grand Teton National Park. While we visited, the clouds never fully left and there was a stiff, cool breeze, but the skies were clear enough for some nice scenic pictures, like this one of Beth:
We spent several hours in the Jackson Hole area before turning southward towards Logan, Utah, our destination for my next meeting. On the way, we made a quick swing past a Forest Service guard station that we lived at one summer while working on the Bridger-Teton National Forest at the beginning of my grad work at Utah State:
The moose in the picture above is a sculpture. We stayed at the guard station located above the highest visible buildings in the picture (above the moose). People would paraglide off the mountain (Beaver Mountain) on the left side of the picture. We arrived in Logan around supper time and checked into our hotel. We were less than thrilled with this hotel (ask me about it later), so this morning (Monday) we checked out before my meeting on the Utah State University campus--I had made reservations at a much nicer hotel Sunday night, after we decided not to stay there any longer. My meeting (the North American Forest Ecology Workshop) will run the rest of the week (I speak on Thursday morning). After checking into our new hotel this afternoon, we had dinner at a local Mexican restaurant we used to like going to when we were students here. We then drove up Logan Canyon to a scenic spot in the mountains. This site is near a small lake and has a lot of spruce, fir, and aspen timber. The kids were happy, because it was high enough to still have snow in patches:
After an hour or so of breathing the fresh, clean mountain air and throwing a few snowballs, we headed back down to Logan, and drove around the city a bit to look at places we used to live at or go to. Here is the view of Logan from the west side of Cache Valley:
Logan Canyon is the gap on the right. The big mountain on the right of Logan Canyon is Mount Logan:
The tall structure on the bottom center part of the photograph, just sticking up to the base of the mountains is Old Main on the Utah State University campus. What a spectacular place to go to college! We'll spend the bulk of this week in the Logan area, and start heading back to Monticello by Friday at the latest.
Comments