Yellowstone in Winter

For Christmas this year we took the kids to West Yellowstone. We went snowmobiling, snowcoaching, etc. We took off the day after Christmas and came home New Years Eve. West Yellowstone is the snowmobile capital of the world and we saw snowmobiles at businesses, the grocery store and even at church. The ward is about 70 active members but sacrament meeting had about 250 people, and they said in the summer it averages 500. It was good to see the church is the same where ever you are in the world.

We went to the Bear and Wolf Discovery Center and saw real live bears and wolves, I was suprised to see how big wolves are, no wonder the pioneers were afraid of the wolves as they crossed the planes.

Monday when we took off on the snowmobiles it was -24, and Zane got very cold. We got him warmed up at the warming hut, about 15 miles into the park, and he was good to go the rest of the day. We saw elk, swans, buffalo and coyotes, I just wished I had a gun. Old Faithful was lots of steam, as were most of the geysers. But it was cool to see the park covered with snow. The snow conditions were down from average but it was much colder.


Tuesday we took a snowcoach to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It was a 15 passenger van with snow tracks on all 4, it went in the snow very good. The waterfalls were all frozen over and it looked cool to see the water shooting out thru holes in the ice. We saw hundreds of buffalo and some were bedded right next to the road so we got a good look at them.


Wednesday we went outside the part on snowmobliles on our own. It was lots of fun. We went 72 miles that day. One spot we stopped was called Big Spring, it was a river where a big spring came into it. It was warm so nothing was frozen over and their were huge fish everywhere in the river.


It was a great trip and we were able to see Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. Lots of country we have never seen before.

http://picasaweb.google.com/tadhjolley/YellowstoneDecember2009?authkey=Gv1sRgCK7J8JSy8YLhhgE#