We are still alive

"YOYOYOYOYOGIRLFRIEND!!!!!!"
- Traditional Aunt Burn Birthday Greeting

The Gates of Yellowstone

Apparently the CBS Sunday morning show aired a segment on grizzly bear related deaths last week leading to mass hysteria in the poconos.  It's ok kids, we're still alive.  We didn't even see a single grizzly bear or black bear.  We did see mountain goats, bison, elk, bison, mule deer, bison, lots of bear scat and bison.
We spent an amazing four days in Yellowstone where we walked through the geysers, hot springs and mud pots.  For those of you who haven't been to Yellowstone, you might be interested to know that Old Faithful is neither the most regular or biggest geyser.  As far as we can tell it was just the easiest to make a tourist attraction.   It's still pretty cool but it doesn't compare to some of the other features in the park.  It does often feel like you're on the surface of another planet when you walk through some areas of the park. We also hiked to the top of Mt. Washburn and its observation tower which has a one room apt. for the poor ranger who spends each May-September at the top of the mountain all by his lonesome looking for fires.


Kevin and Hillary's "Double Rainbow Moment" at Yellowstone's Grand canyon: 

From Yellowstone we went to Glacier National Park straddling the US-Canada border in Montana.  There seemed never to be a sight line short a gorgeous view and a night without a whipping wind.  The highpoint was our hike to Grinnel Glacier, a rapidly disappearing cap of ice churning into an enormous pond of glacial water at elevation.

Its estimated by 2030 the glacier will no longer exist.

We celebrated Hillary's birthday with a trip into Canada, my first visit though not first attempt.  Unaware that it was Canadian Thanksgiving - they eat turkey as well - and that little would be open, we celebrated in style at the bar of the Queen's Hotel, an indigent hotel in Fort Macleod, Alberta.

The excitement of Canadian Thanksgiving

We drove out to Seattle last night, and we're pushing on toward Sequoia today.....suffice to say running out of time in all senses.  We could spend a day trying to sum the beauty of Glacier and Yellowstone, but it would never do it justice.  No camera has the capacity to capture them without being there.