Road Trip - Summer 2015: A Day of Rest (and Leeches)

On Sunday, July 12, we decided on a day of rest. Ben slept virtually all day in the tent trailer. The rest of us read and played card games and took walks around camp. It was a much needed break from the car.

Ben inspecting the quality of his bear photos. I think they turned out great!

 

It's a beautiful sunny day and we're at the lake. Sean brings a towel and decides to take his shirt off.

It's hours before the heat of the day. We're approximately 8,000 feet above sea level. Sean decides to put his shirt back on. (But he still got in the water. Brrrrr!)

This is the West Thumb of Yellowstone Lake. It's a couple hundred yards from our campsite.

A cool "cave" overlooking the lake.

Michayla, Sean, and Shea listened in the cave as I read some stories from the Bible. We didn't attend church on this trip, so I needed a spiritual boost. It was nice. :)

Sean gave up trying to find lava rocks that made good skipping stones and just started chucking rocks at the lake.

Shea befriended a moth. It climbed all over his arms for at least 15 minutes.

Michayla and Sean pushed this driftwood into the lake just because they could. They got soaked in the process and decided to ride it in the lake.

A family carrying fishing poles walked by us and the smallest boy said to his dad, "Why would they get in the water? Don't they know there's leeches?" 

Pssshaw! If there were leeches in the water, wouldn't there be a sign or a warning from the rangers or something? They wouldn't just let people wander in and find out for themselves, right?

Sean and Michayla were still scoffing when they sloshed out of the lake dripping with water, covered in gritty lava-sand, and... "what's that on your ankle, Michayla?" LEECH! Yeah, she smacked that thing off her leg so fast it went flying onto the beach. When she had collected her wits, she searched around until she found it wriggling in the sand and she picked it up on the end of a stick. It was pretty small and didn't leave a mark on her skin. Still, I kept imagining Humphrey Bogart dragging the African Queen and my stomach flipflopped.

That pretty much killed the lake mood. We went back to camp and Sean and Michayla rushed to change clothes and did full-body inspections. The All Clear was sounded, and we were able to laugh about it the rest of the day!

Autumn, Michayla, Sean, Shea, and I walked to the visitor center at Grant Village and did a thorough tour, including watching the film and reading all the plaques.

Autumn loved the bones. Her favorite class in school last year was anatomy. She announced to the ranger behind the counter, "I want to be an osteologist!"

Why does Bullwinkle's voice enter my head when I see this picture?

 

We walked back to camp along the trail and saw an elk cow casually grazing outside the visitor center. She seemed to follow us halfway back to camp. Autumn had some amazing shots, but the settings were messed up on her camera and they didn't turn out.

Fitbit recorded my Sunday step count as 10,767 steps.