the Stone- 2011

Over Labor Day weekend, we decided to take a family trip to Yellowstone National Park. Garrett has been to Yellowstone every year since he was 6 months old. This July would have been his 14th consecutive year fly-fishing with Russ and Chris Homer. However, this past July Garrett's baseball tournament fell the same week as the annual trip to "the Stone". I could tell Russ was very disappointed. Then Russ had an idea. We would take a family trip into the park over the holiday weekend. Garrett seemed excited to keep his streak alive as well. So we jumped in the car late Friday after work and made the 9 1/2 hour drive to the West entrance of the park. We camped in the Madison campground the first night, arriving about 1:30 in the morning. i am sure our neighboring campers were not too thrilled with our arrival. But Russ and Garrett quietly put up the tent while the rest of us stayed quiet in the car.
I could not believe how cold it was up there. When you are leaving 110 degree weather, it is hard to believe that it could possibly be cold somewhere else. It was beautiful as always and the temperatures were actually a nice change. I was able to run through the park in the morning. I think I was able to get about a 10 mile run in. I had been training for the Red Rock Relay which I was running the following week. It was hard to run in the higher altitude and rolling hills, but nice to have a change of scenery. Russ and the kids reserved our campsite for Saturday night and set up the tent while I was running. Then we met and headed up to Slough Creek for a hike and some fly-fishing.

We saw tons of creatures and animals. The kids loved catching the frogs and crickets along the way.



I saw my first Mormon cricket. They are crazy huge. We didn't have too much luck fishing this trip. The boys and I each missed a couple of fish. Russ and Gracie were the only ones to actually catch anything. Russ would hook the fish and Gracie would reel it in.

On the hike out of Slough we had a red fox leading us up the trail. It stayed on the trail about 20 feet in front of us for quite a bit of the hike. Whenever I pulled out the camera it would hide off the trail. That was an animal we had never seen in Yellowstone before, so it was fun to see something new. After our hike, we drove into cook city and ate at our favorite little pizza joint outside the park. It tasted so good this year. We then drove back to our campsite and crashed. Russ and Gracie were both sick by this point. We were up all night listening to the two of them coughing up a storm. By the morning nobody was feeling good. We decided to drive back to St. George. We listened to some Jack Marshall, John Bytheway, and Brandon Doman talks on the way home. The kids really liked them and have been quoting them ever since.
It was a quick trip, but successful... Garrett can say he has been to Yellowstone for 14 consecutive years. All and all, we had a great time and just enjoyed being together.