 |
| Evidently Chris hates this picture because he thinks he looks silly! I LOVE love love it because to me it shows what a GREAT father he is!! |
 |
| Gonna have to add this one to the Watermelon Wall of Fame!! |
 |
| Scott and the family enjoyed a weekend at the condo's in Tuscon that we all stayed at a few years ago. After the visit he and Jill bought into the timeshare and now enjoy trips together at various locations! Wish we'd been there to enjoy it again with them!! |
 |
| Little Lehi turns two!! He's so tiny but sharp as a tack!! It was fun celebrating with him and some of the family! |
 |
| I love this picture ..... check out his hand .... He's saying "Gramma, call me!!" lol |
 |
| Isabel has sucked two fingers since she was a baby and still puts herself to sleep with two in her mouth. |
 |
| Baby Maddox just found his. (Not the same two ) but he found them. I think it is so cute! Beats a binky! lol |
 |
| Stillman and Michele had their 3rd little boy on July 8th. He and Caden McGregor (our eldest grand son) share the same birthday! That makes 3 Nortons/Stewarts that share a birth day! I guess when ya have 30 it's bound to happen! Keaton Riley Norton weighed 8 pounds 4 ounces and was 19 and 1/2 inches long. We stopped to meet him on our way home from the Berezay reunion which was held in Montana. He was a little over 2 weeks when we met him. |
 |
| Then exactly a month later, on the 8th of August, Jeff and Christa had their 1st baby. Little Maddox Reid Stewart was born 3 days over due! He was 7 pounds 13 ounces and 21 and 1/2 inches long! He's gonna be tall like his daddy! We feel so blessed to have so many wonderful blessing in our lives that call us Gramma and Grampa! What beautiful little boys! I am anxious to make a trip to Portland to see Maddox. Hopefully soon! What treasures they are!! |
 |
| Tuesday was our last day in Yellowstone Park so we made the most of it! We arrived in the Park around 8:30 AM and didn't get back to West Yellowstone till around 9:30 that night! It was a long day but we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We started by driving up to Yellowstone Lake. We saw bubbling mud holes ........ |
 |
| And beautiful blue water ...... |
 |
| With bubbling caldrons of hot water right along the shoreline! It was amazing!! |
 |
| The likes of which I have never seen!! |
 |
| A very nice couple from Germany took our picture after we volunteered to take theirs. It is something to see and hear ALL the nationalities of people in the National Parks! |
 |
| After leaving the Lake area we drove further North and came to an extremely SMELLY area!! Bubbling mud hole and stinky lakes! |
 |
| And I mean HOT BUBBLING MUD!!!! |
 |
| This body of water was called SOUR LAKE! I had to laugh at some of the people walking around covering their noses with a handkerchief. One guy said he thought he was having a reaction to the smell! lol |
 |
| Here I am at a place called "MOUTH OF THE DRAGON" .... A big cave looking geyser with bubbling water and steam belching out! |
 |
| After leaving that area we drove into some beautiful meadows and found a herd of Bison. 2 babies and some adults! Pretty darn cool!! |
 |
| I wanted to see the falls in the worst way but I did not want to hike any further than I had to as my legs and feet were swollen and my right knee was giving me fits!! Luckily the Upper Falls were a short walk from the truck and a beautiful sight to behold!! Getting to the Lower Falls was another story! We had to take the Uncle Toms Trail and it was a hike and a half!! On the way down I said to Tony "I sure hope we don't see a Grizzly and a younger couple in front of us overheard me. He turns around and says "You just have to be able to run faster than your husband!!" lol |
 |
| It was SO WORTH IT to get to the bottom and behold THIS!! It drops 302 feet and is magnificent. |
 |
| I was proud of myself for making it down BUT now I had to get myself back up the mountain!! A lot harder than I thought! I had to stop at every visible spot to sit and catch my breath! At one point I told Tony "If we see a bear, run and save yourself! I can't " lol He said he would probably do something heroic and we'd probably both be done in! lol Luckily, there was enough people on the trail and enough noise being made ..... we didn't see on!! |
 |
| This is the sign I should have paid more heed to before descending! lol Not really .... I'm glad I went and got to see God's wonderful handiwork!! |
 |
| After making it to the top again, we drove to a part called "Artist Point" WOW!! I can see why it was so appropriately named! The sight was INCREDIBLE!~ Absolutely breathtaking! |
 |
| We drove further North again and saw a sign that said "Petrified Tree" We stopped and started hiking again ...... It was a paved road but it still was going UP!! On the way up we saw a Moose across the draw. We were able to take some pictures of him (Next picture) but this is the tree. There had been 3 of them to begin with but again, STUPID PEOPLE picked at them for souvenirs till there was only one left and it had to be enclosed in a fenced area to protect it! |
 |
| And here is Bullwinkle.... Still eating as we came down from the tree. |
 |
| We drove to Mammoth Hot Springs before turning to head back to West Yellowstone. It was beautiful! The hot springs and the minerals in the water here formed travertine. It looked like snow and was gorgeous! |
 |
| It was a pretty good hike up the mountain to these formations too and I was hurting! |
 |
| But they were incredible to see and I'm glad I made the effort! |
 |
| The hot water coming off the mountain was beautiful! After seeing this, we discovered that there was a road that you could drive to where we were so rather than have me walk all the way back down to the truck, my dear sweet husband said he would go down and get it and drive up to get me! BLESS HIS HEART!! I took him up on it and he was down and back up in no time! |
 |
| On the way out of Mammoth we saw a deer. 1st one in the Park that we saw! We headed back to West Yellowstone and Tony pulled off the road at another sight of geysers. I walked a little ways and then handed him the camera and said "GO FOR IT!" I was beat and didn't want to go another step! |
 |
| He came back with a picture of a cute bunny! |
 |
| And a picture of Emerald Spring! We then started the drive back. It was a wonderful vacation and we enjoyed seeing the Park together. It is beautiful and we would love to go again sometime. I am just so grateful to live in the Beautiful United States of America and be able to see all the wonderful places this country has to offer. God is so good to us!! |
 |
| Not long after driving into the Park on Monday morning, we spotted a herd of Elk. There were 14 of them so we pulled over and got a picture! |
 |
| Up the road a bit more we saw our 1st Bison. We got out of the car and took a picture. He was alone and there were several people standing on the side of the road taking his picture. |
 |
| We got into the stops (which were MANY) along the way to Old Faithful and we walked all the wooden paths to look at the beautiful blue geysers ...... |
 |
| And the not so blue places that outlined many of them..... found out later that is it micro organisms that have managed to grow in the hot hot water! |
 |
| We sat and watched Old Faithful and then after she blew we visited all the buildings in the town of Old Faithful. We went to the Lodge, the Visitors Center, the Inn etc etc..... We also took the hike behind the geyser and saw A LOT MORE GEYSERS!!!!! |
 |
| Here's a bubbling hot tub. Wouldn't want to soak in this one!!! |
 |
| There are the mud pots that have that wonderful sulphur smell that I remember so well from my youth!! |
 |
| And we watched Old Faithful from the back side which was even more impressive than from the front. We actually saw her blow 3 times while we were in the town of Old Faithful. Pretty cool! |
 |
| And yet another form of wildlife in the Park. Not sure what kind of foul it is but it's a bird of prey! |
 |
| And thar she blows again!!! |
 |
| There were a lot of cool geysers on the walk we took. I can't remember the names however but they were fun to watch! |
 |
| This is Morning Glory!! I told Tony that all I remembered from my childhood at Yellowstone was Old Faithful and Morning Glory Pool. It was so disappointing because STUPID PEOPLE have thrown garbage into it and because of that her vent is clogged and her color is no longer the pure aqua blue that it was. It use to be blue from the edge to the center and a radiant blue that was exquisite. Now algae has started growing because of the crap that was thrown in. It makes me so mad that people destroy the beauty of nature. |
 |
| And yet another little creature of the Park! Chipmunks are so cute! And not so scary as some of the things you can encounter in Yellowstone! lol |
 |
| On our way out of the Park on Monday we got into a HUGE BACKED UP TRAFFIC JAM! Again, people are asked to pull over if they see an animal they want to take a picture of and NOT TO HOLD UP TRAFFIC!! Well, we were so far back that we had no idea what was causing the traffic jam. People were getting out of their cars and walking up the road to see what was up!! 45 minutes later people started walking back and I asked one gal "what's the holdup" She said" it's Bison" ....so we thought there must be a herd in the road! When the cars finally started moving and we were able to get up the road quite a ways, we see ONE BISON eating along the road and a Ranger sitting in his car flagging the cars to keep moving..... Dang people! Why can't they obey the rules! It was very frustrating to us!! |
