My First Camping Trip

I had lots of fun last weekend! I went on my very first camping trip and I hope there's more to come in the summer. We drove for a pretty long time...but we saw lots of awesome scenery, so it was worth it. We stayed overnight at a place called Beartooth Lake (the 4th picture is Beartooth Lake). It was very pretty....but for some reason there was grizzly bear signs up. Not a great start knowing there is a bear lurking around! We heard bull elk bugling at night and then saw a cow elk in the morning by the lake and she was "talking" to her male friend a lot! I'm not sure if you've ever heard an elk "talk" but they sound really weird. The only problem with the trip was that it got REALLY cold at night...20 degrees Fahrenheit (-7 degrees Celsius). It's a good thing we had lots of blankets and I had a jacket, warm sleepers and a down sleep sack! It was weird sleeping in a new bed with my mom and 2 dogs (my dad was relegated to the other side of the tent trailer), but at least everyone stayed relatively warm. All in all we had a great night and I can't wait to do it again...but only when it's warm!

Montana Scenery

Montana has SOOOO many beautiful places to see. Yellowstone Park was ranked #3 by the Today Show (even though most of the park is in Wyoming). On our way down, my mommy took a few pictures because I was sleeping...she said she'd show them to me later. The first picture is going up Beartooth Pass...at the top you reach over 11, 000 feet. It's pretty cool going up all those winding roads! The second picture is of the "Grand Canyon" Montana...we didn't get to take a picture of the really cool part, but this turned out pretty well. The 3rd picture is of our "landmark" mountains, Pilot and Index...named because of the "index finger" pointing up to guide pilots and Pilot is named because he wasn't looking up at Index and slammed into the mountain side...so now it's called Pilot. The other pictures are of Old Faithful at the south part of Yellowstone Park. It's a pretty neat place because of all the "hot pots". It stinks like rotten eggs in some parts of the southern part of the Park because of the thermal activity.

Don't Feed the Animals!

The really cool thing about Yellowstone Park is that you never know what kind of wildlife you'll see. Well, bison are pretty much a given...my mom and dad call them park cattle, but as for other things, it's always a surprise. One of the rare sightings that caught people's attention and caused a road block was a grizzly cub. My daddy told me not to mess with him, because momma bear wasn't too far away! We also saw a bison on the road...he almost got hit by another truck. In a place called Mammoth, we saw a TON of elk...a little raghorn male, a 6x6 male and a whole bunch of cow elk and their babies. My daddy was surprised not to see the "big boy" with his herd because they very rarely leave them during mating season just in case another bull elk tries to take the harem. It was pretty cool to see all of these elk in one spot...too bad my daddy didn't have a hunting permit for the Park!

Fire in the Park

Well it's not everyday that you get to see a forest fire brewing in a major US National Park, but that's exactly what we got to see. Since they had the road blocked off for awhile to let the helicopter "bomb" the woods with water/fire retardant, we got some pictures! My mom was pretty excited to see this, my dad wanted to get through the roadblock and I wanted the windows closed so I didn't get smoke inhalation! Needless to say, they got it under control and we were allowed through after about 30 minutes.