West Thumb

The West Thumb hot spring area is right on Yellowstone Lake, only a couple miles from the camp gound at Grant's Village where we stayed. It's a fairly active site, and part of Yelowstone Lake is the West Thumb Caldera. Incidentally, Yellowstone Lake is huge.

To give you an idea of the size of the lake, I've marked that narrow neck of the lake where the Caldera connects to the rest of the lake. I also marked it on the pic below. That's what it looks like from the shoreline at West Thumb, which is basically opposite that narrowing on the caldera rim. You can take boats on the lake, but you're not going to want to ski. The wind whips up at a moments notice, and the water is cold. Typical is in the 40's.




This is one of the views from the boardwalk.






Some of the vents are physically in the lake itself.





These three pics are of our favorite hot spring at West Thumb, the Abyss Pool. It's 53 feet deep.

Lions and Tigers and Bison Oh My!

Unfortunately we didn't see any bears. We did see a lot of mule deer and bison. One of the main roads that you use to access the norther part of Yellowstone was shut down for construction, and that northern part near Montana is where you are more likely to see bears.

Here's a bison right along the road. This is the stretch of road that is right next to Yellowstone Lake. I damn near hit one of these coming back from fishing the night I fished the Yellowstone River. It was on the same stretch of road this pic was taken on, and might even be this bison as we took the pic the day before. I had fished until dark, and was coming back doing about 45. He was walking down the road in the same direction I was driving, about three feet into the lane. I had to swerve like hell to avoid him. If I had been looking out at the lake or down at the radio I would have plowed into him. It was all I could do not to go back and shoot that damn thing.

This is a small herd that was along the road. There's stretch of road that follows the Yellowstone River after you go past the lake, and you pass through a wide open grassy valley called Hayden Valley. This is along that road a mile or two before the Hayden valley section.

The closest we came to bear was this sign at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.

My house

So here is my house.





Some of you have never seen my house and those who have, it has been changed since you were here. The family room, guest bedroom, dining room, kitchen nook, Kerri's clock wall, the chalkboard wall, wall of pictures in the family room, front porch, and screened in back porch. Kerri made the house sign along with the "Never Enough Time". Below, we both refurbished our kitchen nook table, made the seats for it, and built the hutch with the spindles and plates on it.














Here, we painted the wall with chalkboard paint, I routed the edges of a long piece of wood and drilled holes for those hooks. The picture frames Kerri and I made by cutting and painting the wood, cropping the pictuers, getting glass cut, cutting the matte, and mounting everything ourselves. It was a pain in the ass. The pictures are of both sets of parents and grandparents in black and white (Dad holding fish, Domizio Giannini, Mom in her sexy head turn picture, etc).
Kerri loves to decorate and she is obviously fantastic at it. She hopes to set up a business and some point and do it for a living, selling antiques and decorating peoples houses.

Old Faithful

Downstream from the bridge over the Firehole a few miles is Old Faithful. The pic of the river in the post below is looking upstream towards the Keppler Cascades, and fishing is allowed. Looking downstream from the bridge this is what the river looks like. You can see a marked increase in the frequency of the whitish hot spring deposits, hence this stretch being off limits to fishermen.




And here's the girls waiting for Old Faithful to do it's thing.







While we were waiting for Old Faithful to go, a smaller geyser along one of the trails went off in a fairly impressive display.












Finally, Old Faithful erupts and we can check that off the list.














Along the trails at the Old Faithful area, there's a number of other fairly large geysers, like Castle Geyser. Castle only goes like every 13-18 hours, so we didn't see it erupt.

Firehole River

One of the rivers I fished is the Firehole River, or as it's less commonly known, Gonorrhea Creek.

Only got one night on it, and had kind of a weird size distribution. I was dry flying it, and there was non stop action of small stuff in the 5-8 inch range, browns and rainbows. There were two exceptions, a couple rainbows that were approx 14 and 16 inches respectively. I only fished there one night so I don't know if that's typical or not. Don't have any fish pics as I'm leery of wading with a digital camera, and on that stretch of the Firehole it's flies only, and you have to release anything over 13 inches.

First pic is me and the girls with a section of the Firehole in the backgrond called the Keppler Cascades.



Second pic is a little ways downstream of the Keppler Cascades, and a few miles upstream of Old Faithful. Shown is the start of the section I fished. Picture is taken from a bridge, and it's fairly easy access to the river from the bridge. Upstream of the bridge is flies only, downstream of the bridge towards Old Faithful is no fishing at all due to the high number of hot springs close to or in the river.


Last pic shows how the river got it's name. There's a ton of hot springs that empty directly into the river, and fishermen have died falling into them.

Yellowstone

Been busy, haven't had much time to go through my pics yet.

We stayed at Grants Village, which is right next to Yellowstone Lake. It's pretty nice. It's $17 a night for tents. There's flushable toilets in the restrooms, good water supply, lots of trees, etc. Each campground has a nice firepit with a built in adjustable height grill and a table. The location is also nice as your within 25 miles or so of several of the busier attractions like West Thumb, Old Faithful, Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, etc. A couple hundred yards up the road are showers, a laundromat, and a general store with groceries and all that.

When I get a chance I'll go through more of my pics. Here's a couple for now.



There's Kenzie and Casey in front of our little 4 man Coleman tent. I recommend that tent. It was $70 at Target, and on one of the rainy nights it was sitting in a couple inches of water, and we stayed dry.









And there they are on the table. I must have twitched just a bit. It's slightly blurry.















These next couple are of us at Fishing Bridge. You guys probably remember it from when Mom and Dad took us. It's where the Yellowstone River comes out of the lake, and you can see those huge cutthroats down in the water. We walked down to the water for the pic. Those supports in the background are the bridge.

Quiz Time

This is an easy quiz. Click on the post comments to see the answers.

Identify the house by google's new interactive globe. It kicks ass.

Hints:
1. The house two dreams built.




2. Everything's smaller...err... bigger here.









3. Just click your heels thrice and think...









4. How 'bout some fried okra?









5. I like to headbut ceilings.

Vacation

I'll be in Yellowstone until next Saturday.

In 1999 I sent a message into the future to everyone. It should be getting here right about...now.

Greg's New House in Birmingham, AL

I spent the night out with Greg, Mandy, and Bill. No, I didnt sleep in the same bed with Bill. Here are some of the pictuers I took. They live maybe about 10 minutes from dowtown Birmingham where Greg is doing his master/PhD work in molecular biology focusing on genetics. He has a full ride scholarship and is doing good. Just the normal pics of the front of his house, backside of his house, backyard, green kitchen, and oh yeah, Bill's kick ass pink slacks was wearing on the plane ride home to L.A. Greg's house is nice and has a lot of room. There air conditioner is a little weak but other than that, he has a great house. He lives in a town called Iron dale and there is a huge iron statue of the roman god Vulcan, god of fire and forge. Of course, his ass is bare so I took a picture of that.

Haircut

I got my haircut yesterday. It's kind of short, but not as short as in the past. Since I've been scanning pics, I present the cycle of the length of Gordon's hair, from short to long back to yesterday's shortening.

First one about 5 years ago.




Next is summer 2003.


Then last summer at Chester.












And this morning.