Monday, February 16, 2009

Yellowstone

Okay, I'm off to Lethbridge this afternoon to work for 2 weeks. The vet that I'm working for and house/catsitting for has a terribly slow computer, so I thought I would update da blog before I go. In September I managed to get a picture of one of the neighborhood cats that I've been trying to photograph for about 5 years. His real name is Angel (barf) but we have always called him Pushy-Face the Half Orc, or Pushy for short. Check out those lower canines. The fun thing about Pushy is that he looks adorable from a distance, then gets rather ugly as he gets closer due to his underbite. He's really sweet and will come over to greet you if you kneel down and call him over. He's also a great weather indicator, as he will only be seen outside on very nice days. This picture makes him appear more ugly than he really is, mostly because it makes his eyes look creepy.


One of the neatest things we did this fall was go to Yellowstone with Tamara & Shawn. It was a whirlwind tour of Montana. We spent Thursday night in Lethbridge, then took the Going to the Sun Road through Glacier National Park Friday morning, which was very cool. It's only open about 4 months a year. We spent about an hour or two shopping for yarn in Kalispell. I think that Camas Creek Yarns may be my favorite yarn store so far. They have EVERY colour of Cascade 220, and almost every colour of Manos. And they have a sweater's worth of all of them. It's insane. I bought a sweater's worth each of Dream in Colour Classy, Cascade 220, and Rowan Pure Wool DK. That should keep me busy for the next 2 years. We spent Friday night in Missoula and ate at Cracker Barrel to make Mike happy. Not that the rest of us mind eating southern food either. We stayed at Ruby's and had their delicious included breakfast Saturday morning, then burned over to Bozeman and Yellowstone. Yellowstone National Park is an increadibly beautiful and weird place. As you drive through it, you see steam coming up out of the ground all over. We went to Old Faithful and hung around waiting for it to go off. It goes off every 1 - 1.5 hours. The geyser is a bit of a tease, and threatened to go off numerous times before the big show. After the eruption, the crowd dispersed and we looked around other parts of the park. The old hotel is pretty amazing. Look at this woodwork!


There are boiling/bubbling pools all over the place.





We got very lucky and managed to see a geyser called the Great Fountain erupt. A lot of locals were there who were grumpy from the last time they sat there for 3 hours and nothing happened. Apparently the Great Fountain doesn't erupt in the daylight very often. This was even cooler than Old Faithful because we got to sit right next to it while it went off.


This picture was taken while we were waiting. I used the magic knitting trick to make the geyser erupt. I brought out my knitting, and sure enough, the geyser erupted within 2 minutes. This usually also works well for getting transit buses to show up.

I didn't get a good picture of the eruption because we were so close that it was just a huge wall of steam and water that didn't photograph well.

We spent that night in Bozeman, did some speed shopping Sunday morning, and drove back to Lethbridge where I stayed to work and Tamara, Shawn, & Mike continued to Calgary.

I have lots more to tell about, but I have to get on the road now. Back to Lethbridge!

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