Adventures on the Loose

So, crazy adventures aside, we made it into the park in the morning.  We set up camp to reserve our spot early and cooked breakfast before heading out to check out the area. After a random hike around a patch of trees in the midst of shrubs, we took a boat ride across Jenny Lake to a trail that led to Hidden Falls and Inspiration Point. This trail met the Cascade Canyon Trail, on which we found two moose!  A cow moose and her baby. Of course, the baby was most likely taller than me! We were so excited to see moose the first day there! We also saw two black bear cubs climbing a tree, pikas, ground squirrels (different than the ones at home), chipmunks, a marmot, a vole, and a grizzly bear. All Day 1. The camping and the cooking out was fun, and we managed to do a ton of hiking over the course of the week. We saw bubbling mud pots and hot springs, geysers and fumaroles, lots of buffalo and a couple more bear cubs. We learned to identify some flowers and to stay away from the elk.  Don't worry, we didn't learn the hard way! We watched Old Faithful erupt twice, although I liked the Sawmill Geyser better.  The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone was amazing, particularly the Lower Falls. Linz and I cracked ourselves up taking crazy pictures there. I didn't post any because I'm sure it's much, much funnier to us than anyone else. Per Curt's suggestion, we also went swimming in the Gardiner Hot Springs; although, we didn't see any wildlife there. We did cross into Montana to get there...my first trip to that state. One night, we were even lucky enough to lie under the stars and watch a meteor shower that we hadn't even known was occuring. We also witnessed a double rainbow one evening.