Here they are! Cabo 2007

It is truly beautiful in Cabo. The beaches and the views were amazing, and it helped that we didn't see a cloud in the sky the entire time we were there.

Cabo is of course know for it's fishing, and the harbor was filled with boats...and pelicans.

(Yep, those are sea lions!)

You can even just stay in your resort and have a wonderful time. Ours was beautiful and we made sure to spend a lot of time just laying by the pool. Dana and I decided that the best souvenier we could bring back was a good tan!

This is the place just down the beach from where we were. You can walk right out onto the beach from your room. I just thought it was beautiful.

So here we all are. (And Joel and Dana will probably kill me for this picture, but it's my favorite!)


So as I sit here, just begining to peel and knowing I will get no sympathy from anyone for it, I just want to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving! I am so thankful for all of you and love you dearly! Adios!

Cabo Introduction

This is just a preview until I have time to edit the pictures. Cabo was BEAUTIFUL! This is a little video I took of Madeline pointing out some of the finer points of the resort where we stayed. I hope you enjoy it, and keep a lookout for more pictures coming soon! (Sorry about the annoying clicking. I took my old digital and that's the sound of the focus on the video setting.)

Last Hike of the Summer

August 17, 2007

(I think)

I finally got these pictures off of my camera today. I knew this would be the last chance I would have for a hike this summer, so off I went. I am going to have to get you better details later, because I don't remember the name of the hike, but I do remember it had two selling points. The first one was called "Mossy Falls," and the second was an overlook. (Check out this tree that grew over the trail. It actually has another tree growing on top of it!) The hike was a pretty good distance, but beautiful, and I saw more animals on this hike than any before. Mostly just rabbits and frogs, but still, it was enough to scare me to death a couple times. The other thing about this hike was there was a lot of steep up and which wouldn't be a problem except that my fall in Yellowstone left me a little skiddish. There was one hill that took me a good 15 minutes to get down. But, it was good for me.

I got to the place where Mossy Falls was except...it wasn't. It appeared the creek had already dried up for the summer and all that was left was a bunch of black mossy boulders. Oh, well, there was still the lookout, right? I climbed up to the lookout and guess what I saw....trees. Yes, the trees had overgrown the lookout, and you couldn't see a thing. There was a lovely bench there though which I sat on to eat my lunch. Another hiker came along and rested there as well. After chatting a little while we discovered that we had a lot in common. He had family in the Boise area, went to BSU. He also had lived in Wyoming for awhile and had attened UW (the REAL UW, right dad?). How crazy is that? He was even getting ready to fly down to Boise to attend the BSU/UW game! It was a nice suprise for the end of the season.

Now, I'm just looking forward to next summer.

Oh, and keep a look out for my pictures from Mexico coming soon!

Yellowstone #7 - Yellowstone Lake

This is the last one! Phew! Thanks for your patience!

So, the evening after our hike we took a boat tour on Lake Washington. It was one of those tours where the tour guide tries to be funny but no one laughs, well, sometimes we laughed. Anyway

we learned some interesting things. Like there is a shipwreck on the lake. (Sorry about the reflection on the glass.) The boat was built by this guy who was actually pretty evil, and the boat was basically a floating "den of iniquity." He also captured the animals in the park and made a zoo and then didn't take good care of the animals. The rangers eventually ran him out and burned his boat.

You could also see one of the major forest fires, or at least the smoke from it.

Yellowstone actually has several forest fires every year. Most of the time, though, they are in the lesser inhabited areas of the park so you never hear about them.

Well, that's about it. The next morning we were up before the sun because I had to catch an afternoon flight out. We did get to see a beautiful sunrise, though.

I hope you enjoyed my Yellowstone pictures. Let me know what you think!

Next up, my last hike of the summer and then Cabo!

Yellowstone #6 - The Big Hike

Today I want to show you the big hike we went on, about 5 miles, while we were in Yellowstone. The hike starts out following along the side of a big hill and the backside of Prism Spring. It's a huge spring and when the sun shines through the steam rising from the surface it's like a moving rainbow cloud. Of course my picture doesn't really show that part, but use your imagination.

After about a mile it turns and follows a trail through a new growth forest. After the big forest fires of 88 it took awhile for the trees to grow. They are now at the perfect Christmas Tree height so it was like walking through a Christmas Tree Farm. The main downside to this is that there wasn't a lot of shade.Next you come out into an area where you can see mostly burned trees. I don't think this is still from 88, it's probably a more recent fire. We followed along the base of this cliff for another mile and a half...with significantly less shade.Then, we were there! And this small stream of water just drops off the edge of the cliff several hundred feet. Between the shade of the cliff and the mist from the water, it's actually pretty cool under there. If you were brave enough to get wet, you probably could have swam right up to where the water falls.I love how the water shoots over the edge and doesn't even get the rock wet until almost halfway down.We rested there a little while, then headed back out, watching the beautiful views of the valley. One thing to say for the lack of trees is it makes for great views!

(This is the stream that flows out of the bottom of the falls. That's all the water there is!)I loved this hike and would love to do it again in another five years or so and see how much more the trees have grown. There wasn't a whole lot of up and down, especially compared to what I've done before, but it's still a nice challenging length, especially in the sun. But then again, give me another month or so and I'll be begging for some sun!

Yellowstone #5 - Old Faithful Part 2

I am posting two parts to this today, so if you haven't seen the first part, you may want to read that one that comes after this first...does that make sense?

OK, So, after watching castle geyser erupt, we all split up. My dad went out to Morning Glory, my mom went to the gift shop, and I went to see the smaller loops on the map.

This one's called Chinese Spring, and I just like the picture with the river in the background. :)

One of the reasons I wanted to take the smaller loop was because of this smaller geyser called Anenome. It starts out completley empty of water (like on the left) and then every 20 minutes or so it fills up completley with water, starts erupting, and then all the water drains back out of it and it's completley dry again. The whole eruption takes like 30 seconds. Very cool!

Right next to Anenome, were some benches where you could watch Old Faithful go off. (It goes about every 90 min.) I could see that there were tons of people waiting down at the main viewing area, so I knew it must be about time and I waited. Old Faithful started and then immediatley behind me this one, Plume Geyser, started going. This one shoots a good 10 feet in the air and scared all of us that were sitting there. Everyone was taking pictures on one side and then the other. Here's Old Faithful:The plan was to meet dad back at Grand to watch it go. We were going to be there early. We were NOT going to miss it! So I met him there on the one bench with any shade and we waited, and waited, and waited...
We waited through a wind storm and hot sun. We waited for hours. This geyser called West Triplet went while we were sitting there at least twice.Then it happened (you can see some of the storm clouds in the back) and it was VERY cool. It's hard to comprehed just how much water that really is. (Notice Triplet Geyser in the front, completely empty of water.)When it was done, Dad and I headed back, but I made him stop at the Inn so I could take pictures. The Inn has been around for almost as long as the Park has, well officially anyway. It's very cool

The Inn is huge. This picture shows the nest which is 5 stories up. They used to bring in choirs to sing up there for Christmas in August, but they can't anymore because it's not structurally sound. It really is breathtaking. Whew! That's it for Old Faithful! Just one or two posts to go!

Yellowstone #4 - Old Faithful

This will be the largest post by far. It's taken me several days to get the pictures ready for you, about 25 in all. Plus you get a free science lesson. All for free!

Old Faithful is, of course the most famous part of Yellowstone, and sees the most visitors every year. (Although, why you'd come all that way, and just see Old Faithful is beyond me.) The best thing about Old Faithful, is that is also the place where you can see the most thermological activity all at once. The map shows most of the named vents (springs, geysers, etc.) (not that you could actually tell what any of those words are). The entire route is about three miles. OK, here we go.

We got to Old Faithful early enough to see Grand geyser erupt. There are only 5-6 geysers that are regular enough for the rangers to bother predicting, and even then it's not exact. Grand is predicted, give or take a couple hours. So basically, you get there early and can wait up to four hours for it to go off. But, it is quite a thing to see. It is the largest predictable geyser in the world. (Yes, bigger than Old Faithful itself) and goes off about twice a day. That's a lot of pressure, and a lot of water! So, we got there to hit the first one, only to find out it just finished as we got there. So we decided to do the loop, wait for Castle to go off, and come back for the afternoon eruption.

This is called Pump Geyser. It's one of the ones that pretty much just goes all the time, so it obviously doesn't go very high.

This is called Doublet Pool. It's a hot spring. OK, science lesson time. Basically, it goes like this: water from rain, snow and things seeps down into the ground. Because Yellowstone is a volcano, you don't have to go down very far to get to heat, so the water heats up and comes back up to the surface. If it comes up without any drama, it's just a hot spring. If a lot of water is trying to come up where there is a little hole then the pressure builds up until it erupts as a geyser. (Just like when you put your finger over the nozzle of the hose.) And that's just the beginning!

This is Ear Spring (because it looks like an ear, those rangers are so creative!). The water coming out of different springs aren't all the same temperature. You can tell because the spring is almost white. I'll explain more about this later.

These are called the Lion Group. They are mostly just steam vents, but the steam comes out with such force that it sounds like roaring.

This is Sawmill Geyser. It goes off for like 20 minutes every hour or so, so there's a good chance of seeing it. It's incredibly noisy, just like a sawmill, and erupts about 6 feet in the air.

This is Beauty Pool. I personally think there are prettier pools in the park, but whatever.

This is Chromatic Pool and a good place to talk about the heat in hot springs. See, different kinds of algae grow in different temperatures of water. In the hottest springs (blue and white) no algae can grow. So, you can see in most springs including this one how the water gets cooler as it goes out from the center leaving vivid rainbow patterns.

This is Giant Geyser (next to Bijou and Mastiff) Giant is one of the largest geysers in the world...when it goes off which is measured in years. A lot of times there is more than one geyser/spring on the same underground vent and they effect each other. Giantess Geyser was in an eruption cycle while we were there and you could tell when she was going to go off by the other geysers around her.

Riverside Geyser is one I really wanted to see but didn't get to this time. The geyser actually shoots out at an angle over the river.

Morning Glory is one of the more famous springs. It used to be blue in the center and more white towards the outside, but over years and years of people throwing coins and other things into the spring, it actually cooled the water and destroyed the beauty of the pool.

After walking the "big loop" I met my parents at Castle Geyser to wait for it to go off. We waited a couple hours (we were early, but we got a good spot in the shade) and then got to watch it. The "castle" part is built up over hundreds, maybe thousands of years of eruptions. Overwhelming to think about, huh!

OK, I'll stop this post for now and continue later!