Yellowstone, Hyalite, dogs & dragons

We've been having the most beautiful weather here lately. Yesterday I opened the windows in the apartment because it was in the 60's and felt like spring. Nice! I'm definitely not suffering from the same anti-winter feelings that I had last year in South Dakota. Probably because of the abundant sunshine and the lack of wind here.

We've been keeping busy, in a good way. This past weekend we went to our first ball after doing 6 weeks of dancing lessons. As Josh said, it was our "debut," and there is definitely a learning curve! It was PACKED there, so not only were we very focused on doing the right steps, we were also worried about crashing into people. We only know the foxtrot and jitterbug right now, so we couldn't dance to every dance. But it was still fun!

On sunny days, a neighbour on the bottom floor puts out its reptile to bask in the sunshine. Josh calls it an iguana, but I don't think it is? Is it a komodo dragon? I don't know. We aren't allowed to have pets in our building, but... I'm not a tattle-tale. Here it is (click on photo to enlarge):

A couple of weeks ago, we spontaneously jumped in the car and headed down to....

Yes, it's closed in the winter. BUT, one road in the northern part of the park that runs east-west is open all year. So we took that as far east as we could go. I took a lot of pictures, but I won't bore you with all of them. Here are just a few. Here is one of many elk relaxing in the sun:

There's a reason why the park is closed in the winter--the roads aren't very clear.

We saw a couple hundred buffalo. They were all over! They are like 2000-pound snowplows. They just plow through several feet of snow with their snouts, digging around for the grass underneath.

We went as far as the road went. Literally. It's closed at the east end of the park, and there is no way out but back the way you came. Actually, it's right outside of the park, a little town called Cooke City. It's where all the snowmobiles and their riders come. Cooke City was like an old Western town. There was one main street, covered in snow, but instead of horses tied up to hitching posts like in a Western movie, there were snowmobiles parked up and down Main Street.

Obviously we had to turn around at that point. It was getting dark anyway. Because the ground is so hot in Yellowstone (from the volcano underneath it), when the cool night air descended, it got very steamy. We were driving through a fog. (By the way, Josh researched the "super-volcano" in Yellowstone when we got home. There have been more than 1000 little earthquakes in the last 2 months in Yellowstone, but geophysicists say it's nothing to worry about. However, if it did blow, we would be in big trouble! Also, if it blew, it would wipe out half of the U.S., so don't think you're safe just because you don't live as close as we do!)

So that brings us to this past weekend. I had a strong desire to take a nap in the sun, so we drove about 20 minutes out of town up to a place called Hyalite Reservoir. I don't know if you can see it in the pictures, but there were cross-country skiers everywhere. (click on the picture to enlarge it)

We don't have skis, so we couldn't join them. We could have gone hiking, but we didn't bring proper gear for that either (since there was so much snow up there). Anyway, we came to just enjoy the sunshine! So we felt a little weird, but after we sat outside for a while, we hung out in the car where it was still very sunny and warm. Josh brought his model to work on. And I ate refried beans out of a can since that's what I felt like eating for lunch. We joked that we probably looked like we were homeless with all our junk in the back seat, Josh working on his model, and me eating beans from a can. Oh well! It was a very enjoyable afternoon.

Josh wanted me to include this. This is a doggy "hitching post" at the grocery store and it proves that Bozeman is a real dog town:

Congratulations if you made it this far! That's all for now.