Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Day Eight: Oh, goodbye good old Yellowstone!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011





We had a joyous snowball fight in the middle of the summer! Well, I’ll save the best for last! The beginning of our day was started by going to a bird museum at the RV Park. I was looking at birds, like the magpies, common crow, and raven when Jasmine made my look around the museum even better. She ran over, telling me that there are river otters. I loved river otters because they were so cute, and I ran off to look at them with her. They were adorable! They had small black eyes, and a small mouth with a mouth turned up at the corners, as if it were smiling. And I smiled right back at it. We took a look around that section of the museum, and then I spotted our national bird. The bald eagle! On a post, it read that the eagle was tracked from a radio connection for three years, and then they dropped her. But then, during the same year, they found her dead with no apparent reason and with the radio connection still intact. It was creepy and mysterious, but the eagle was cool. We walked alongside the river, freezing our hands in the water and whining that our hands were cold all the way back to the RV.

We were bison watching again. This time, we also saw a cowbird! They and the bison were great friends. The cowbird flew around him and suddenly landed on him. The bison liked it and stood still, just eating grass with his little friend perched on his back. It was a cute friendship!

Our day today wasn’t filled with action or anything else until the end of the day. So I guess I’ll have to tell you about the snowball fight. To begin it, I might tell you I had it with Jasmine (if you know her, you would have guessed she started it already). We were trying to take pictures that showed there was snow in the end of June, when Jasmine was like, “Ding ding ding! Light bulb! We can have a snowball fight!” Of course, she didn’t say that, she just sneakily picked up some snow, and then, KABOOM, pieces of snow fly past my ear. I stared over at her, then grabbed some snow, chased her around the RV and got her on her rear end, so it looks like she wet herself. I laughed; glad I got so lucky to hit her on my first throw. But she was quick and got some snow to get me back. We threw snow back and forth, until I saw my dad… he was videotaping us. This time, instead of throwing snow at Jasmine, I saw he was helpless when videotaping so, again, KABOOM! His shirt was wet! All he did was say hey when I ran away laughing. Jasmine got my back, and I got hers, so we were even. Instead of being cold all over, instead of our hands which were frozen from collecting snow, we were laughing and yelling that we wanted revenge and we were hot and sweaty. It was one of the best snowball fights I ever had, especially with the great background! And it was a sad but happy fight to our last day ( :( ) in Yellowstone!



Jasmine and I were inside the RV resting, when my mom burst in. There was a playground, we found out. So Jasmine and I slipped on our shoes and ran outside to find my dad at the playground. I noticed the odd shaped house on a hill. It was truly odd shaped!

I hopped on an empty swing. And when I noticed my dad in front taking pictures, well, I had the best idea in the world! I swung higher, and higher and then flung my flip flops off at him! Sadly, they both missed, but my dad got the idea and threw them back at me. After a while of flinging flip flops, our mom came out and told us not to do that. That was when it started getting boring. I sat down with my mom and dad on a wooden bench. They were talking to a person. I actually don’t who he was, but I knew he had one of the most adorable daughters! Her name was Zoë, she had short blond hair and she had just turned three! We slid down the slide, swung her on the swing, and talked about Mr. Lincoln. And George. She was saying it in a cute baby way, so I didn’t realize she meant the presidents on Mount Rushmore until later. We played and played until we had to go. Goodbye Yellowstone! Goodbye Zoë! Bye!

Day Seven: The dark side of Yellowstone...

Tuesday, June 28, 2011


Today we saw lots of stuff. That includes a bear. A bear! Another bear! I can’t believe it, except this time we saw a grizzly bear. It was way cooler this time because the bear was eating. Well, the black bear we saw yesterday was munching on grass. But this grizzly bear was eating a fresh kill for lunch!! We stared through the binoculars at her. We could not see what she was eating but we later learned that it was a baby elk. Poor elk! A park ranger started telling us about her. She was once seen beside the road nursing two cubs of her own. Later, she was seen nursing four cubs! It turns out that two of the cubs were hers and the other two were her mother’s (basically she was nursing her sisters or brothers) who was too old to nurse. I did see a little blood peeking out from the grass. And, suddenly, she looked up from her nap! And the park ranger said that was because she smelled another bear, which was trying to get food and smelled her elk. She had to protect it; it was her meal for dinner too. It was so exciting seeing a bear eating fresh kill!


We saw an elk. This time, there is a reason I am writing about more elk. This specific elk was a male elk, with horns and all that good stuff. He was just eating grass along the hill, lazily, pretending not to notice all the cameras directed at him. He had proud, tall, velvety antlers sticking out from his head. He looked magnificent! Like all elk should. He would eat nonstop, and then look up, away from us being very leader like even though there was no one to lead. It was nice stopping to say hi to him, but we had to get along with our trip.


We were walking to the next trail when I saw a chipmunk. I had the camera and did what fate told me to do, which was take a picture. Then, I showed my mom and said, “Look at the beautiful picture of you!” She tried to look mad, but she couldn’t help it.

Oh no! More smelly rotten eggs! By the way, the steam from the geysers smells like rotten eggs because
of the sulfur. We were going to see mud pools. They are hot sizzling pools of mud. I liked them, because my mom thought they were bleh. But right when we opened the door, simultaneously we all gasped ew and squeezed our noses tight. It really was more disgusting than rotten eggs. Way, way, way more! So I had to hold my nose all the way there. The first one was bubbly, bubbly, and smelly. That basically explains all of them. One of the coolest, though, was the Mud Volcano which usually spouted mud just like a volcano. Sadly, it busted too much and blew away the whole cone, leaving a bubbly mud pool. It was mice knowing how cool nature used to be.

The next one was called Dragon Mouth Spring. It smelled also. It was mud, spouting and bubbling, flicking and churning, not much different than the others. So I decided to make a joke out of the title. “This dragon has bad breath. He should try a couple hundred mints,” I said, holding my nose. And it sure did make my mom laugh. It didn’t turn out too bad, my mom said we saw all the colorful bacteria mats, and now we should see the dark side (all the springs were black). I guess I now knew that nature can be pretty and smelly at the same time. I was not sick of nature yet, or springs, so I wanted to see more. We drove to the RV Park, looking joyfully upon the pictures of the bear and the elk.