Saturday, July 2, 2011


Clarisse, Evelyn, and I spent the week at a Jensen family reunion at Yellowstone, and had a great time! It was fun spending time with family, and we appreciate all of the efforts of the planners and organizers, especially Grandma J who rented the cabins.
The first site that we visited in Yellowstone was the most famous attraction: Old Faithful. It puts on a nice show about every hour if you are willing to wait for it!
Old Faithful is the most commercialized part of Yellowstone and is surrounded by some interesting buildings. This picture is of the interior of the historic Old Faithful Inn.
I liked some of the other geothermal features even better than Old Faithful. There were several hot springs that gave off sulfuric-smelling steam and had perfectly clear, sky-blue water.
Sapphire Pool was one of my favorites despite its small size.... It's so otherworldly.
This is the Grand Prismatic Spring. The center of the spring is blue, but the banks are bright orange due to thermophilic bacteria that thrive there.
There was plenty of natural beauty besides the thermal features. This is Yellowstone Lake where we stopped for lunch. The water was too cold for swimming!

This picture of the canyon was taken from the very appropriately named Artist's Point. We saw a few impressive waterfalls during our stay.
Evelyn had a good time whenever she wasn't in a car seat. She enjoyed the new sights and textures and had no trouble finding things to play with.
Here we are wearing our shirts that were signed by everyone at the reunion. All of the signatures managed to fit on Evelyn's little onesie.
Oh, and I'd better not forget to mention the wildlife! There were buffalo everywhere, often stopping traffic. You can hardly blame people for wanting to stop and look though. We saw a couple elk too, and I didn't mind not having any bear or wolf encounters.

3 comments:

  1. Awww, she looks so happy! That is incredible. Nature is crazy, isn't it?

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  2. Thermophilic bacteria are awesome! I heard they used DNA polymerase from thermophilic bacteria for PCR.

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  3. Wonderful picture of the three of you.

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