This folks, is the pretty part of Wyoming. Not to be confused with where I live, as that is slightly different. It takes about 7 hours to get here, to the Tetons where one can find some of the best camping and skiing that a place could offer. On the backside of these mountains is an amazing ski resort. I want to go next winter for at least a little while. 
This is me next to the waterfall in Yellowstone. We had a great time, spent five nights in the park, after getting there really late. Because we were camping at about 10,000 feet elevation, the weather was a little strange. The two days before we got there, they had sunburned, it was so hot. The next day, I had breakfast in the sunshine, then had to run for cover as the rain and hail came in. By evening it snowed, and at night it rained again. Luckily for us, our tent stayed warm and dry, and before we left I petitioned mightily for double sleeping bags, which I won out on. Nights were spent with Peter much too warm because his wife in her flannel was snuggled right in. He'd move away, I'd get cold and follow him until in my sleep, I actually chased him right off the mattress and he had to wake me up and ask me to move over.
This is Peter and his dad standing next to one of the gysers. Yellowstone happens to be one of only 3 places in the world where you can find active gysers. Iceland and New Zealand have some also. There are lots of places to go hiking where you can get right next to them. This was on about a 2 mile hike we took, where despite the weather, I got rather sunburned on my face. Nothing like "tomato face" to go with no makeup (okay, a little makeup. Don't want to scare the wildlife) and greasy hair. The mist is coming from one of the gysers and smells just like the water when you boil a bunch of eggs. It's a little smelly, but it's such a neat place you don't really notice so much.
This is a picture I took of one of the hot springs. The sulfur makes the edges really yellow but the pools are so small in circumference (biggest we saw was about 20 feet across) and so deep the pool goes from the prettiest blue, to black in the middle. The water is crystal clear and there's no bottom to the pools in sight. It freaks me out a little. What must live down there? Nothing likely, since most of the pools are actually boiling hot. We were freezing at this time, and they looked so inviting.
This is just a cool little gyser that blows that funny smelling gas. It looks like a little steam engine to me, we thought it was funny. 
Here you can see the pit in the middle of the pool where it just goes deeper and deeper until it goes black. Creepy I tell you. The hot springs are right next to the lake, and way back when, the explorers of this place used to catch fish in the lake, and boil them right there in the hotsprings. Sounds a little gross to me to cook already yucky fish in sulphur smelling water, but hey, that's just me. Can anyone tell I have a tour guide for a husband? I learned a lot about a lot of strange things on this trip.
This is the "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone". The river cuts through the rock a really long ways down, as you can see by the teeny little walkway that goes down. We didn't get to go down here, too much to see, too little time to do it all, even in five days.
This is me snuggling with my husband, who still liked me even though I disturbed his sleep. It's okay, we usually went to bed around 11pm and didn't get up till 10am. I love camping. We hung out around the fire in the evening and read the last of "The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe" (we're reading all the Chronicles of Narnia to each other). I love this man. What a doll.
This is just a cool picture of the steam vents on our hike. There were so many amazing things to see here. In a lot of the places you can't walk anywhere off the path because the earth is really thin in some places and you'll fall right through. A little boy had fallen in just before we got there and had some pretty severe burns, but is doing okay last we heard. Poor little guy.
This is a really pretty waterfall that I hiked down to to take some nice pictures of. The sun was hitting the water really beautifully. I have a better picture but I can't figure out how to turn it around, when I post it, it's sideways, so meh!, what can you do?
An overlook of the major waterfall that feeds the little one in the picture before this one. Again, I have a prettier picture of it, but can't seem to turn it around. Peter thinks I have to save them somewhere and edit them and then load them here. I couldn't be bothered.
This is the Tetons coming up out of the lake. The coolest thing about the Tetons is that it's pretty much flat around them, but then they jump out of the flat brown land around them and there's just a few really tall mountains. It's amazing... A major point of the trip was to find good homemade fudge. There was none to be found in the enitire park, but if you drive 100 miles from our campsite to Jackson Hole, you will find a nice little fudge shop with fresh fudge, of which we bought 2 1/2 pounds. I'm still eating mine.So there you have it. I think we're going on smaller trips over the next few weeks, which I'm looking forward to. I'm still denying the fact that there's a pile of smoke smelling laundry in our car. I don't want to think about hauling it up to my apartment, stinking the place up, and then paying a million dollars in quarters to wash it downstairs. I may ask my in-laws if I can come over and use their washing machine and dryer and make dinner in exchange. We'll see. Anyway, that's it. I haven't posted a ridiculously long blog in a while, so there you have it. It's also too long to spell check, so I'm sorry if you've been reading this and getting annoyed.
7:41 PM
What a beautiful place. I wish I could have gone camping with you. I stayed home all weekend and played mommy which was also fun. Hopefully this summer we will be able to go camping too.
9:25 AM
I am glad that you had a beautiful trip, and what is cool is that I have been to most those place before. So thanks for sharing them!!
10:04 AM
I take it there were no moose tramplings? Too bad.
12:00 PM
Thanks for the long post Mel. You did a great job, maybe you could do up a broshure for them.It was almost like being there. Almost but not quite. You would have to put one of those smelly things in it, like they do with perfume.
It makes me think I'd like to see it though. Maybe someday.
Glad you had a great time. Don't you just hate camping laundry!!
Love you a bunch
Auntie Sue
10:51 PM
Sounds like an amazing week end. Wodnerful pictures an commentary to make a person feel like you are there.
All I can say is we didn't do any work on the house this week end.