We spent from Monday through Thursday doing the loops of Yellowstone National Park. Each area is so different from the other but all beautiful in their own way. We saw and hiked to many waterfalls and saw many thermal areas with the waters being so hot they were boiling and all you could hear was the gurgling of boiling water and mud. We saw geysers and of course Old Faithful. It is hard to explain what Yellowstone is like. It is huge. We spent 3 twelve hour days just trying to cover it all. We have posted pictures from lots of the loops and hope you won't be bored looking at them. I tried to put captions under a lot of the pictures for a better explanation.
On Friday we took a ride in Montana to 2 old cities that existed in the 1800's. Most of the buildings there were original buildings from that era. Most of them looked like the owners walked out and locked the doors and left all the interiors and shelves completedly stocked. It was amazing to see. You felt like you were in the 1800's in an old West town.
We also visited the Madison River area where a 7.5 magnitude earthquake occured on 8/17/1959 at 11:30 PM. Not that long ago. It was the 4th biggest earthquake in the U.S. at that time. We went to the visitor center there and the man who did the talk on the Earthquake actually lived through it. He was 15 yrs old at the time and camping on the river with his parents. It was so interesting to hear what happened by someone who actually lived through it. There were 300 people in the area at the time the earthquake hit. 28 people died. 19 were never found. The earthquake hit on the Madison River. Earthquake Lake was formed by the boulders that fell from the mountainside during the earthquake blocking the Madison River and creating the lake. He told us so much that happened that night that it is too much to write about here. It was an incredible story. We thought we would stop by the visitor center and spend a 1/2 hr but it was so interesting we ended up spending a few hours there. This was a great day and an unexpected find.
Today is Saturday the 14th. We left Yellowstone Park this morning and are now at the Grand Tetons. The mountains here are amazing. We rode around a little bit this afternoon and ended up going to a small little chapel for evening mass. It was a log cabin chapel (very pretty). We'll be going out tomorrow to tour the area and will update once we have done a little bit of sight seeing.
Having a great time. What a beautiful country we have.
pictures: http://picasaweb.google.com/motorhome234
the new pictures are very beautiful! I love you!
ReplyDelete