More pictures from Big Sky Country

Snow Shoeing and Montana

Wolf Watching: Winter in Yellowstone

We spent the first of this past week in Montana. I wanted to see wolves in Yellowstone (The only animal we hadn't seen this summer). However, the wolves don't exactly care for humans, making them difficult to spot. We quickly found out that private tours take people through Yellowstone (for a couple hundred dollars) to see wolves, so we began to follow them. Wherever we saw large groups of people with spotting scopes, we knew there were wolves. I was able to see my wild wolves, though only through the scope. We saw wolves from three different packs: The lava creek pack, the druid pack, and another. We saw the alpha female from the Druid pack, a beautiful Grey wolf. Our zoom lens couldn't reach unfortunately, so no pictures. We also went snow shoeing, Heidi was a good sport and tagged along for an hour...she being 36 weeks pregnant. We have included pictures from snow shoeing, a coyote, and a bull elk (Which we think would qualify as an Imperial in Boone and Crockett's...) After leaving Yellowstone, we stayed at a bed and breakfast for our 2nd Anniversary. The bed and breakfast was also a sanctuary for wolves which had been taken from previous owners, who had illegally bred them. We posted a picture of one of the greys, which is taken from the other side of the chain link.

A sleigh ride through dirt.

We planned to take what was to be a semi-romantic sleigh ride through the Elk Refuge in Jackson, Wyoming yesterday. Jackson is a destination a lot of Americans visit every winter to ski. Knowing this, we didn't consider the possibility that the snow hadn't fallen yet. It was fun nonetheless.

Elk Refuge Sleigh Ride: Jackson, Wyoming

Yosemite National Park

Grand Tetons: Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point

Fairy Falls Hike- Yellowstone National Park

We've told basically everyone but I guess for you that follow the blog (I think there are about four of you), we're pregnant! I'm about 9 weeks along and due in January. Everything is going good I guess since I'm feeling sort of lousy. My sister said that feeling crappy is a good sign that the baby is alive and kicking. Anyway, summer's coming along slowly, we've had more thunder storms here in the past two weeks then california has in a whole year. I guess rain is always good, but I want to go swimming! But we're going home next week for the fourth of July so I will get to do it then. I guess it's good because it's keeping Steve and I indoors doing school work. We finish the semester at the end of July and then we're home for three weeks (woohoo!) and then it's back for student teaching in driggs. 

Into The Wild

Today we walked into the wilderness, and walked out as men (and women respectively).  Heidi and I hiked in the Jedediah Smith Wilderness, in the Caribou Targhee National Forest, just northwest of Driggs Idaho.  Our intention was to hike out to the wind caves; 3.5 miles from the trailhead.  However, despite it being summer everywhere else in the world: here in the great state of Idaho we have winter/snow all year!  What a joy.  Hiking in the wilderness is different from hiking in a National Park in the sense that the Forest service lets mother nature do what she will, and they do not maintain the trails.  Trees had fallen everywhere from what must have been high winter winds.  We scrambled over and under several until Heidi had finally had enough.  One of the pictures we posted shows Heidi pointing at a grouping of at least 3-4 fallen trees at the point where we decided to turn around.  The trail was otherwise a pleasant uphill route through age old Dolomite that must have been carved by ancient floods. We hiked switch-backs half way up the side of  the Mountain (albeit somewhat small) before turning back.  We must have climbed about 600-800 feet in elevation.  You can see a decent shot of it on the posting, between the trees.  

After the hike, we stopped by a local grocery store to order a sandwich from the deli.  We asked the staff to order a sandwich, however they kept directing us to a 7-11 style cooling case which contained sandwiches most likely as old as the dolomite we had previously been hiking through.  I didn't understand.  It seemed to me that they didn't want to make a sandwich.   I asked the lady if I could kindly have a smoked turkey sandwich.  She said " I guess I could make you one if you didn't find one in the cooler".  I thought this was an odd statement.  Heidi ran into a similar problem.  As she was ordering the sandwich she wanted, the lady asked "What do you mean, vegetables???"  Had we walked into a town so backwards they had never heard of the American classic, the SANDWICH????? Sandwiches are more well known then presidents, or even Burt Reynolds!  It was at this point, Heidi backed out and purchased something out of the case.  In hindsight, I should have done the same.  However, the stubborn person inside of me could not understand how a person (especially someone who works in a deli) had never heard of a sandwich.  How can you explain that to someone???? My best shot was to say that it was similar to an oreo, with the bread as the chocolate wafers, and the delicious hickory  smoked turkey as the cream filling.  I kept this to myself, however.  I was interested to see what they would do, and watched as she took out two slices of wheat bread which looked not unlike something that a person might receive as a charitable donation from a food bank.  She handed it to me, both the giver and the receiver trying not to laugh at the other.  Me, because she worked at a deli and had no knowledge of sandwich making: Her because I paid $5.50 for a   sandwich that was worse than anything that the convenient store cooler could have offered.

In other news, I just yesterday located an internship to do half (about 50 hours) of my volunteer hours for Occupational Therapy grad School.  The place is called Camp Hippo.  it's an outdoor therapeutic camp (for kids with developmental delays, and other various delays) which employs Occupational and Speech therapies.  I will be working with the Occupational Therapist. The internship is located in Blackfoot, and will be mostly outside.  Alot of the therapy involves horse riding.   Its about an hour drive, but I think that this internship is much more unique than the traditional office experience.  I think it will stand out on a grad school application.

Jedediah Smith Wilderness: Caribou Targhee National Forest

Grand Teton and Yellowstone Day Hikes

The pictures below were taken on two successive day hikes in the Tetons and Yellowstone.  Heidi and I hiked out to Taggart Lake in Grand Teton.  There was still about 3 feet of snow pack in certain areas when we were heading uphill.   The hike was  only about 4 miles, but the snow slowed us down quite a bit.  All the pictures but the one of me on the suspension bridge were taken in Grand Teton.  

Grand Teton and Yellowstone Day Hikes

So I'm finally getting around to writing about the pictures that Steve posted from Yellowstone. Wehad lots of fun but it's still pretty cold there, I would say it was in the high 30's and low 40's for most of the day. And parts of the park still under snow. But we were licky to go this early because the bears are coming out of hibernation and are hungry and probably a little disoriented as well. We were driving along when we got up to a line of cars and we were like, oh great! another bison in the road. but little did we know that it was actually a grizzly bear strolling down the road. And I mean he didn't look like he had a care in the world! It was so cool, but of course he was on steve's side of the car so I rolled down my window and contorted my body as much as a i could to get a picture. Then a ranger came through and scared the bear off the road and sent us all on our ways. It was probably a good thing since that bear could have done some serious damage! Anyway, I got to get to class so I'll write more later!

new semester

So steve and I started our new semester this week and we're both pretty excited about it. I'm in two practicum courses one where I teach 5th graders twice a week and another where I will be teaching one-on-one high school students who are below the reading level for their grade. Steve's in a bunch of psych classes and anatomy and physiology so it should be interesting. i'm also working as an enumberator for the U.S. Census and it's pretty fun but tiring at the end of the day. Most of the people I talk to are very friendly, one women even invited me into her home t osee it because she was getting a divorce and was sad to leve the home because she said she was the one who decorated it. She talked to me for about 20 minutes about her life and the divorce, I'm devinitely learning lots about life with this job. Anyway, the weather is much better but it can get pretty windy which is kind of annoying but at least there is no snow. I still haven't found out about student teaching but they are currently working on putting me at Snake Rivere which is about 45 minutes away so hopefully i can do that instead of Salt Lake. That's about it for us.

Adventure of Epic Proportions

Heidi reverting to her animalistic ways to conquer a steep hill



Last Saturday afternoon (3/28/09), Heidi and I embarked on an epic adventure which tested both our strength and our character.  At 8:00 am we rented snow shoes from the BYU Idaho's Outdoor Center and we drove to Yellowstone's West Entrance.  As you can imagine, the park was completely blanketed in snow.  In fact, the West Entrance was closed for the winter.  We talked to a park ranger and a winter tour guide, who informed us of a snow trail that is groomed all winter long.  The Riverside trail follows the Madison River right into the park.  It was nice not sharing the park with the millions of visitors which flock there during the summer months.  The only somewhat pleasant event occurred when I needed to use the facilities.  Since this was not quite possible, I wandered off trail about 20 feet to a nearby tree.  We hadn't seen any hikers for over an hour by this point, and I felt confident I could relieve myself without any trouble. However just to be safe I posted Heidi about 30 feet down trail on lookout. Ironically, about 20 seconds later a cross country skier came by and waved to me with a smile on his face as I frantically tried to zip my jeans back up.  Heidi said that she had forgotten that she was running lookout, and was mezmorized, watching the guy ski down the trail.  We were out on the trail for just over 4 hours, and believe we travelled between 4 and 5 miles. Snowshoeing is difficult!  It was about 25 degrees F outside, and the snow was flurrying most of the time.

The ducks unfroze!

So the weather has slowly, and I mean very slowly, warming up and today we noticed in the field behind our apartment that there are ducks hanging out in the melted snow puddles. I don't know where they came from but I think they were frozen under the many feet of snow. I'm glad to see that they have come back to life. Anyway, this past weekend was pretty good, we went to a John Schmitt concert, well more like I dragged steve to it. I think he enjoyed parts of it, but it went longer than normal so he was getting pretty antsy towards the end. At one point in the concert John asked if anyone knew jazz piano. There was an awkward silence and Steve decided that was the time he needed to get up and go to the bathroom. So when he got up to walk out John called him out thinking he was going up to play with him. Of course Steve made a joke about needing to go to the bathroom and everyone thought that was hilarious. I learned after that Steve planned to do that! Anyway, like I said before the weather is warming up to be in the 40's which isn't exactly warm compared to California, but for us it's a lot better then below freezing. But of course the warm weather also brought the wind so we're still stuck inside but we're counting down the days until the semester is over and we can go outside.

Saturday Blues

So it's Saturday here in Rexburg and we have nothing to do! Its overcast and lightly snowing with wind so doing anything outside is impossible. And we're poor so going out to spend money is out too. It might be fun to go out and look around at stuff if there were places to go, but the mall in Idaho Falls is pretty pathetic so its no fun. Anyway, if anyone can think of fun things to do when its snowing and freezing outside along with being in an isolated rural area, please let me know. I'll be here avoiding housework and homework because it's the weekend where people go out and do things!!!

New Pictures

So here are some pictures of us sledding today and then of me in Jackson Hole. The jeans I wore had a hole in the knee and as you can see, the ice kind of had a field day with my knee. Anyway, once again I'm jobless. I know I just posted that I got a job, I had it for about a month, but it didn't quite work out so I'm back to the job board. Sledding was fun, the snow is starting to melt which was nice because there was a lot of friction. I get kind of scared when sledding so it was a lot safer to go slower because of all the melting snow. Steve was kind of bummed because he likes to go faster, but at least he didn't eat it like the last time he went. 

Snow and Jackson Hole