VACATION DETAILS

Chad, Sara & Dana, some great friends of ours from MI, just spent a week here with us. Dana is 2-1/2 and is such a gem. I could so easily just keep her as part of our family. Sara is like a sister to Evan, as he grew up with her and has known her his whole life. The memories they bring up when they're together are amazing. I don't think I've laughed as hard or as much as I have this past week in a long time! Sara has also become very special to me over the past 10+ years I've had to get to know her! Chad is a great guy -- easy to have around and fun to be with. He always has a smile on his face!

We left last Thursday, on a rainy day for some trail riding in the Pryor Mts. The mud and snow made things a bit more difficult than we had originally hoped and we couldn't see all that we had wanted, but we had a great time anyway. The views were amazing, and though we slipped and slid through lots of mud along some very steep (& scary!) cliffs, I would do the whole experience over again. We visited the ice cave that is up there, and Myah, Joel & Dana had fun making a snowman! :) The yellow bronco belongs to the O'Connors and the "brown churd" as Dana calls it, belongs to us!

From there, we went to Red Lodge and camped in the Beartooth Mts. We got some small amounts of very heavy snow that covered everything in the night. It made the scenery just gorgeous, but it also closed the Beartooth Pass, so we ended up having to drive down to Cody, WY and enter the park through there.

Yellowstone was really nice, too. The elk were in rut and bugled all night long. We could hear them from our campsite in Mammoth. We also heard the wolves one night, which is pretty neat, too. Evan and Chad had a VERY close encounter with a bull elk that was roughing up some trees. They kept their distance from him as they were trying to get pictures, but he rather quickly came their way and looked right at them. Had my heart pounding for a minute. Our last day, we enjoyed soaking in the Boiling River before heading through Paradise Valley on the way home.

Our last night we spent roasting marshmallows and shooting clay pigeons out at the farm. (Are we rednecks or what???) :) We had a great time, and enjoyed the stars as the sky filled up with them.

We made some wonderful memories. I love that about living out here. We don't see people as often as we did when we lived in MI, but our time together is so much more memorable this way. We all had a wonderful time -- even if it was COLD CAMPING!!!

(Hopefully there will be pictures to come soon!!)