Sapphire Spring
Yellowstone Lake
We picnicked, then swam for an hour. The lake is beautiful, cool and very clear. We headed out after the swim, got hot again quickly, and Gavin crashed in the way back seat. 30 minutes up the road, we saw an animal jam up ahead. Looked to the right and saw bison in the picnic area just off the road – so I quick pulled a Uturn and into the picnic area. And Gavin woke up nose to nose with a bison. He handled that pretty well.
The bison were all over the picnic area – rubbing their rumps on picnic tables, nudging down young saplings as they scratched their chins, rolling in the dust. We spent 30 minutes cruising very slowly through the area, snapping pics.
Back onto the main road and slowly cruised through the rest of the herd. Headed up to dinner at Canyon Village, which was pretty good.
Next awesome sight was the ‘grand canyon’ of Yellowstone. We spent an hour cruising through and gawking. On the way out, we saw someone else dive to the side of the road, so we followed – and saw a wolf running through the undergrowth. We think. It was gone so quickly. That night we wanted to get to the hotel before midnight, so we headed out of the park. Stopped for one major animal jam and saw an elk with full rack, and feasted our eyes on the glory of the park on the way out for the last night.
The next day was a zoom through Idaho back to Salt Lake, to get to the pre-wedding BBQ at the Alta Lodge out of Salt Lake. And we made it. It is a darn good thing that we’d been at 8000+ feet for the previous week. We hit Alta at 10,000 feet and felt woozy and weak all over again. Alta is in a beautiful spot. We enjoyed seeing more family again and the dinner was superb. There were 100+ guests staying at the lodge.
Greg & Andrea with the Alta backdrop
The next morning, all the guests scattered – the insanely fit ones like Zoe and her finance Peter, cousins Julie and Guy went for a run (and Guy lives in Australia at sea level!) We opted for a hike up to Cecret Lake. Beautiful spot, glad I went. But man, did I get out of breath!
High meadow – is there anything more beautiful?
The lake – no swimming, too bad.
I headed back to the lodge and Steve, Colette and their son Kayden did me the honor of coming up to visit. I had known them in San Jose, they moved to Salt Lake a year before I went to Germany. It was so great to see them. I was wondering how it would be, seeing parts of my previous life. It was great!
The Wedding was to start early evening. The plan was to hike up the hill – OK, mountain, across the road to a high meadow that Peter and Zoe wanted for their ceremony. Fortunately, the landowner objected (sorry, folks!) so we all went back to our rooms to put on our pretty shoes and headed to the lower patio for the ceremony. It was beautiful and with an incredible backdrop.
The wedding was great, the reception fun. We danced outdoors until the last possible moment and then humped out suitcases up to the van for our early morning departure. The flights home were fine. Gavin & I saw Shaun White (AKA the Flying Tomato) at O’Hara. He’s very cute in person – and tiny.
Got home at 5 p.m. At 8 a.m. the next day, I started a 1-month contract for work. 2 days later, my fridge died. I am so grateful that it waited until I was back, it didn’t have much food in it but it still would have been such a mess. So I slammed into work, working at a card table and folding chair, and having to put all my food in a cooler, and borrow a cooler, and replace my fridge. Thank goodness for American shopping – I bought a fridge at 8 a.m., for deliver the next day. Try that in Germany – no way. And my house got disordered all over again, and I spent time putting it together again. This seems to be a pattern! Of course, as Ilya Prigogene uncovered, a system comes to maximum disorder just before it reorganizes at a higher level. And the level it reorders at, I believe, has a lot to do with intent. Ya just can’t tell me that chaos theory and quantum physics don’t intersect!
1 comment:
The Flying Tomato?!
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