Jelly-Stone Park

West Yellowstone!!
Okay, I know I'm still back-tracking here but I want to get caught up so I can be up to date. The day after graduation John and I went to Yellowstone with my family. Becca, Aiden, Chris, and my parents were all loaded in the van in time to make it up there for a 2pm matinee of Oklahoma at the Playmill. As most of you know I am in love with that play and could probably act out every part for you myself. But I had never been to the Playmill and had heard that it was a lot of fun so I figured graduation was a good excuse to take a little trip over there.

The play was well done and the little theater was really cute and had a nice atmosphere because it was such a small little box theater. It was hilarious because my dad decided to rename it the "moulin bleu" because it is a mill and looks a lot like the moulin rouge in Paris (and from the movie). So, those of you who know my dad know that he likes to keep a good thing going and he was making cracks about if this was a burlesque version of Oklahoma with some topless dancers and maybe a little bit more action in the dancing underwear girls scene (during the many a new moon song). And we kept laughing which only encouraged him and we were basically calling it the moulin bleu all afternoon and of course we were saying it with ridiculous french accents. Here it is so you can get the full mental image:

While we were watching the play my nephew, Aiden, was being pretty well behaved and walking back and forth in the aisle. Then he tripped over himself and whacked his face on the chair-back in front of us and bounced on the chair seat behind him. Then of course he started wailing in pain and my sister had to squeeze out of the tiny, box-theater row. After a few minutes of him still screaming my dad went to check on him in case he hit his mouth or something like that. They had to take him all the way out of the theater and walk along the sidewalk until he could calm down because it turned out that he got a nice shiner. There was a gash next to his right eye and he looked pretty pathetic. This is a cute/pathetic photo of his little shiner:
After the play John met up with us, he rode his motorcycle up, and we ate at a delicious fifties style diner that unfortunately was out of garden burgers : ) My sister was all excited because they had them on the menu but then they were all out of them and she was moody the rest of the evening. It was entertaining. There was a toy train that chugged around a rail on the ceiling too and Aiden loved it. I had an amazing chicken sandwich and we ordered some great malted milkshakes. I love fifties diners if only for that reason alone; I love malts! If you don't know this about me already, I'm obsessed with photos so here are some fun ones of my family at the diner:

John and I

Mom & Pop

Becca & Aiden

The Crazy Boys

On Sunday we went into the park and hiked around looking at all the geysers. My dad and I were mostly being obsessive photographers and spent at least ten minutes at every spot worth taking photos of. When I get them edited and everything I'll probably put them on my website or a photography blog when I start one. But here's a sample:







We got back to the hotel pretty late that evening and decided that we really didn't get enough time in the park and especially that we hadn't seen enough animals. So we decided to wake up really early Monday morning (I know you guys are laughing because you don't think my family could wake up and be anywhere early) and go back in for more photos and hiking around. Dad really wanted to see some good buffallo herds and such. We made it in by 6am and did some nice little hikes to some cool water falls and saw quite a few buffallo. We even saw a bear way far away that some park rangers had pinpointed in the telescope. It was fun.

Mr. Buffalo

In front of one of the pretty water falls.

Sweet Rapids

Really Pretty Water Fall

That was yellowstone!
The End!