Auf Wiedersehen, Haskews! On June 30th, some of our very best friends left us to serve God in Austria. The couple standing behind Jonathan and their child sitting on his shoulders headed over there. Amanda, Jake, and Abby Haskew will be missed but definitely not forgotten! We cannot wait to go over there and see them and if they come back to the states one day we know we will pick up right where we left off. Amanda asked us to have a going away party of sorts for them with their close friends. Brent is on the far left, Elizabeth, Luke, and Amy are standing to the right of Amanda.

We left the next morning. It was tough to do.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The ski slopes look so awesome. They better be when it costs so much to go there. It is a really neat place, though, with shops all over the place. We ate dinner at the Teton Steakhouse. I had trout!

Look familiar? It did to me. This is a famous barn on Mormon Row in the historic area of the Tetons. I have seen better photos, that is for sure, but it was neat to see it.

We hiked a Jenny Lake trail. Had we known how quickly we would get through the park, we would have gone on further. My feet were killing me, though, from all of the Yellowstone hiking. We will get back there someday.
Me by Jenny Lake.
Us with the Tetons. They wouldn't smile.

The Marina in Teton. The mountains are just unreal. They aren't even that high, but their craggy features are what give them the impressiveness. Jackson, a trapper, and all his trapper buddies used them as a guide point when traveling because they are so unusual.
A nice man from Texas took this photo of us.
This is taken from Jackson Lodge. There was a bear warning on the trail.
Once again, from Jackson Lodge.

Bye bye, Yellowstone. We are heading to the Tetons now.

We were going to hike back by Canyon, but the trail was closed due to high wolf activity. We went back to Artist Point and hiked. This is a view downstream of the falls. It is one of my favorite pictures.
This is us in the same view, but we covered up the river. We went on a couple mile hike and this is one place where hiking really payed off in terms of what we got to see.

This was our last day in the park. We had to go back to Yellowstone Lake just one more time.

Us by the Le Hardy Rapids in Yellowstone. A little later in the summer, I guess you will see a trout jump every 15-30 seconds to make it's way upstream.

We hiked the Mary Mountain Trail on Saturday Morning. There were tons of bison in the meadow. It was a little scary walking by them, so I put my hood up to fit in. I hope they don't notice the colored stripes.
Up by mud volcano. I think this is mud volcano. If you look carefully through the steam you can see a bison laying in the middle of the photo. There were actually three of them sun bathing.
Jonathan really liked the mud volcano area.

We went back to Artist Point in the morning. The view of Upper Falls is much better when viewed with the blue sky of morning behind it as a backdrop.

We ate in Canyon Lodge every night and got the salad bar. After dinner we drove to Artist Point. This picture was Jonathan's idea. Neat?
Jonathan with the lodge pole pines in the background. We stayed at Canyon, so this was our backyard.

The Firehole River. The water running into this river is so hot from all the hot springs that it doesn't freeze in the winter! This is amazing considering this is in NW Wyoming where it is not uncommon to have temps far below zero.
A hot spring by Grand Prismatic Spring.
Me by Grand Prismatic Spring. The Spring is far too large to get a picture of the whole thing aside from being in a helicopter. It has the red microorganisms that thrive in heat and greens and blues, too. It almost looks like the Caribbean.

We didn't even realize it, but we were really close to Old Faithful! We headed up there and only had to wait about 20 minutes for the next scheduled eruption. It was glorious and the day was so beautiful as you can tell by the pictures.

We hiked in the morning. The mosquitoes or gnats or whatever they were were thick. We hiked the Cascade Lake trail. Most things in Yellowstone are easily accessible by car. We just wanted to hike to get away from everything.
Yet another hot spring:).
Ah...Yellowstone Lake. This was one of my favorite places. We spent some of both the second and third day in the park here admiring it's beauty. It is pretty choppy water and it is very cold.

We saw two black bears in Yellowstone. This is one of them. We had the opportunity to get a close shot, but we missed it. Oh well! Some of our friends (The Bialons and Isons went there as well) got pictures of Grizzlies.

Yellowstone is known forf its Hot Springs if you see colorful earth like this it is actually algae who thrive in hot springs. It is kind of gross I guess, but it is really pretty.
I am not a geologist...I guess Jonathan should be typing this part, but these are awesome. They are all up by Mammoth.
More calcium terraces. They were incredible.

We drove down to Yellowstone that day and entered the park through West Yellowstone. Th picture above is of Gibbon Falls.
Artist Paint Pots. The color doesn't completely ring true, so it was way more colorful...I bet on a truly sunny day it looks even more awesome. We were heading up to Mammoth from here.

Parting is such sweet sorrow. We will be back, though. We decided while we were there that we would take one of Blondie's puppies if we could figure out a way to get one to Oklahoma. Here is a shot of us holding one of the two dogs we would maybe get. The dog in front of us is just one of their other dogs. His name is Grebe.
Blondie and the puppies.
This is a photo of the front of the Dorrell's house...it's pretty awesome.

The last day after we hiked with our friends, we came back to the Dorrell's and headed over to one of Troy's job sites. He "moves" houses, which means actually picks them up and moves them. This is a barn that was on the property where he was working.
Here's a house up. There was a tremendous hole where it used to be. I guess they are putting in a basement.
Here's some neat old derelict barns that were out by where Troy was working. Cool, huh?
I have some pictures of VBS from the final night, but nothing very different. It was a good VBS and by the last night I think we had doubled our first night's attendance!

The Ison's are on the left, then the Bialons, and then us. The last day of VBS, we did not work on the sprinkler system in the morning. Instead we went sight-seeing. This was a lake on the drive up to Palisade Falls in Bozeman. We stopped here and skipped stones.
Karli is posing with her parents rental car...an H3 Hummer. This is just before our hike up to the falls. She is such a ham, but she's adorable!
The Falls. We made it. Jonathan went on to hike all the way up to the top. Troy, who we were staying with, told him to do it. Everyone was pretty sure he was nuts. I saw him up there, but didn't get a picture. We couldn't hear him over the sound of the water and I guess he was yelling to us for quite some time. It was really high, too...it's tough to see in the pictures, but it's higher than it looks.

The group at the base of the Falls. It was great to spend a day with people we see all the time, but don't get together with that often. It was good to cultivate friendships.