Vacation '08, day 6

Today we'll head south all day to get to Denver. We have a lovely breakfast at Grant Village, then head towards the south entrance of the park (which might be better called the south exit in our case.) The critters are up and about too; we see a lot of elk around the west side of the lake. They are all starting to shed their winter coats, so they look a bit mangy, but are lovely animals nonetheless. They SMELL, though. I could smell this one as soon as I rolled down the window to take the picture. Uff da.

We stop to admire the lovely falls at Lewis Lake. The water is still icy cold, of course; I can feel chill radiating off of the surface of the river when I look out over the bridge railing.

Leaving Yellowstone to the south, of course, means entering the Grand Teton National Park just a few miles later.

We have another forty-fifty miles of stunning views to endure. Mike and I marvel that such sights still exist in our crowded world. The kids, of course, pretend that they couldn't care less, but every once in a while I'll catch them saying, "Wow look at that" to each other. We keep our eyes peeled for a moose (the one large mammal we haven't spotted on this trip) but no such luck.

After we come down from the mountains, we start making our way southeast more or less diagonally across the state of Wyoming. This is open range, lots of cattle and horse ranches. We come up on a bridge where traffic is stopped -- we get stuck behind a big RV. On the other side of the bridge, there's half a dozen cowboys riding herd on around forty head of cattle, which are all milling about with obvious reluctance to have anything to do with the bridge.

Eventually the cowboys get the herd organized and they begin to cross.

It dawns on Mike & me at the exact same moment that they are headed STRAIGHT FOR US.

In moments, we are surounded by the noisy, mooing things, who jostle the van in their relief to get off the bridge. I am grateful we aren't in the Yaris; some of these animals are bigger than that car is. Half of the cattle head to the right shoulder; half break to the left. It takes the cowboys another ten minutes or so to get the whole herd on the same side of the highway. Quite the adventure!

A long day's driving gets us to Denver in the late evening... we'll hook up with Mike's uncle Ron tomorrow for a visit. Good night!