Fun in Yellowstone

We drove back down through Yellowstone and met up with Caleb and Carley. We all got together a little late due to a life flight helicopter for which they blocked the road for an hour. Because of that we didn't get our tent up, left the sleeping bags on the chairs so we had room in the car for everyone and went to Old Faithful. We were gone most of the afternoon and though the skies had been blue when we left, it started to rain. And yes Russ and Louisa's sleeping bags and Caleb and Carley's tent got very wet. I don't remember the last time I went camping and it didn't rain.
Anyway we had a good time, we saw baby buffalo, elk, a bear (might have been a grizzly, though they are saying it was a cinnamon black bear). No coyotes and it took till Grand Teton to see a moose. The hot pools and geysers were great. We just focused on the area between Madison and Old Faithful and still didn't see everything in the two half days we had. But it was a great visit and we had a good time with Caleb and Carley.

Dropping Jesse off in Glacier

It is a long drive up to Glacier, but we made it to East Glacier about 3pm only to be told that the shuttle had left at 1pm so we needed to take him all the way up. We were okay with that, it kind of forced us to go up to Many Glacier which I'm not sure we would have otherwise. It was gorgeous, stunning, just down right beautiful. He was excited to be in such a great area. We told several people he was coming up to work and they all said, "they have such a great time, he'll have fun." It was a little difficult leaving him at the dorms and driving away...but in the end he walked down to the campground and shared our fire with us.

Tulip Festival

Jesse was kind enough to go with me to see the Tulip Festival at Thanksgiving point. One of the ladies I visit teach works there and is very involved in all the Garden doings. I felt like I needed to go see it since she does so much to make it work. It was a lot of fun. I had only seen the gardens once and I wanted to see the waterfall and the different sections and see how much it has grown since it first opened. They have aways to go before they are anything close to the great gardens of the world, but it is a start.
I love the pictures I got, they are so pretty.

Donny and Marie

For Louisa's birthday present as well as our annual girls weekend we went to Las Vegas and saw the Donny and Marie show. It was awesome. It is at the Flamingo and there has been some grumbling about the old fashioned theater, but they chose it they said because it reminded them of the old days when they were young and working Las Vegas. We had a booth at the very end of the row. My seat was actually facing away from the stage. That was the only bad thing about it. I was glad though that we had seats on the floor rather than the balcony. We were so close to the stage and a couple times Donny walked out on the tables and shook peoples hands. We were just a little too far for that, but still he was very close. One time Marie came down and to our table, Louisa was able to shake her hand. That was fantastic. They really are phenomenal performers. They don't just sing, they entertain and they are so comfortable doing it. We got everything from country to pop to broadway to rock to opera. I loved it, Louisa loved it, we had a great time.

We had picked up our tickets and then went to see the Bellagio Fountains before the show. Then after the show we were able to pick up some souvenirs at one of the shops in the hotel. It was a quick trip. We drove down the day of the show, stayed over night but not on the strip, then drove back up the next day so Louisa could go to work. But I think the trip was worth it. We had a lot of fun.

Geocaching

We got the GPS so we thought we'd try out some geocaching. It might become a hobby. We have a friend who is active and has bugged Russ to get involved for awhile. He helped us figure out how to look up the caches and gave us some pointers. There are thousands and thousands of caches. It is really quite amazing. We learned about the different kinds only after we tried our first few and couldn't figure out where some were. Those were virtual caches,,,nothing hidden just a great place to see. We were glad our first cache was a real cache. It was a box with a log book and some "travel bugs" - little toys that you can take and put in another cache somewhere else. We gave our friend a travel bug to hide and it got taken and has not been hidden elsewhere. That is not ethical in geocaching, but I guess it happens anyway.
Anyway we were excited about our FIRST find.