Saturday, July 06, 2013

BLOGGED ALONG THE WAY: BIG SKY EDITION

5/25/2013 Gardiner, MT to Bozeman, MT

I slept so hard.  I don't even remember falling asleep, but I woke up in a sort of a fort made of pillows and sheets.  I don't know how I did that!

We left our hotel and went back to Yellowstone.  When I say that Gardiner is right on the edge of the national park, I mean it quite literally.  There is a giant arch that opens the way to the park.  See?


We took some photos and then drove through to go back to Mammoth Springs.  Mr. Lee wanted to re-take some photos in that mini-golf course looking place.  I didn't take many photos there myself, but I did get a couple that I liked. This one spring (I can't remember its name) looked like a melting elephant!  I also managed to get a good shot of the place that looked gray scale.

 I'm MELTING....*elephant noise*

 OK, so not completely grayscale. Don't argue!

We also went to a part of the park just a little way away that looked like frozen waterfalls!  Basically it's just a build up of limestone deposits, but it looked like flash frozen water.  I couldn't stay there for very long because the light it reflected was killing my eyes!  It was too bright.

I've heard of hard water before... *rimshot!*

We saw a couple of bison that were just rambling right up the middle of everything.  They sincerely didn't care about anyone or anything that might have been around them.  Unfortunately, a lot of the tourists were all..."Oh, look!  A giant wild animal!  Let's get as close to them as possible!"  A park ranger had to make them move away.  I'm beginning to think that tourists, as a species, don't have very much common sense around animals.  I guess they think it's like going to a petting zoo.  I wonder how many people have been stomped by bison out there?

I KILL YOU!

Next we went to Fort Yellowstone, and we stopped at one of the state park general stores to look around and kill some time.  We didn't stay long, and since we'd gotten all the photos we wanted, we went back into Gardener to look around.  We found a strip of shops to look through, and one was actually a kind of interesting antique shop/local color thing.  That was my favorite!

We finally left there and headed towards Bozeman.  We were going to make a stop and visit with a former colleague of Mr. Lee's on our way there, but we still had some time to kill.  We decided to get some lunch on the way, but there is a whole lot of nothing between Gardiner and that man's house.  We finally stopped at a picnic area on the side of the road and ate some of the snacks we'd been keeping in the car.  It was better than nothing, of course!  When we finally arrived at the man's house, we spent a couple of hours talking with him.  He worked with Mr. Lee at White Sands, back when Mr. Lee worked for the Army.  They both worked with developing lasers, and the man (I can't think of his name and I'm too embarrassed to ask since we were just there) had actually been instrumental with developing laser technology that is being used to clean ancient works of art!  He was very interesting to talk to!

After leaving there, we really headed back to Bozeman.  Apparently we had been on the far side of the town when we arrived, because it turns out it's a pretty big and busy place.  We ended up stopping at a Target to find another suitcase to take home with us.  It had been a long trip, and we'd bought some things that we couldn't fit into the suitcases we'd brought with us, so we needed an overflow bag!  That was the first time that's happened to us!  We had dinner, and then we headed back towards our hotel.  Our plane is leaving early in the morning, so we have to be as ready to go as possible before we go to sleep!

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