This is what I get from trying to do these vacation posts by theme. I end up with leftovers–pictures that don’t fit in any theme, or I don’t have enough pictures on a topic to merit a whole themed post. Yet I feel like showing them. So this last post about our Yellowstone do-over is pretty unorganized. Hard to accept for a former librarian, but there it is.
Some of the tips about photography in posts by WordPress came in handy, like the one about taking pictures of trees from right up at the trunk.
It had been a long time since I had seen pussy willows in the wild, and I like how the light comes through these.
And the new willows added almost autumny colors to river banks.
Most of you will have heard about the Chinese government trying to teach its citizens some basic tourist behavior because people are complaining about them. It still has some work to do. Almost everywhere we went, there was trash. Chinese chewing gum wrappers definitely give away who the culprits are. Especially at the most spectacular stops, where all the tourist buses stop, it was sometimes hard to take the picture I wanted without having a Chinese chewing gum wrapper in it.
Park rangers were having to go around with a sieve spoon on a long stick to pick all the trash from the areas around the springs and mud pots where you aren’t allowed to walk. There were lots of brand-spanking new American baseball caps–which had flown off heads not experienced in adjusting them to stay put–lying all over the place, and this one trash item I just had to take a picture of, because otherwise it would be hard to believe:
Yes, a sanitary napkin wrapper. Lady, how do you even manage that? Do you just keep these things in your coat pocket instead of throwing them in the trash at the restrooms, for the sole purpose of being able to use them to trash national treasures?
Signs of life with bears are everywhere in the towns around the park.
Just to make you jealous, here are some pics of the cabin we stayed in for three nights, right on the Yellowstone River in Gardiner.
The view from the porch:
The porch itself. Of course, we didn’t actually have time to enjoy the cabin much, or the porch, because we left in the morning and didn’t come back until about 11 pm. But I did spend a few hours sitting on the porch swing in the dark, editing photos. If we had a month to spend, or if we had to be home by dinnertime for small children, we would’ve been able to enjoy it more.
Well, that’s all of Yellowstone, folks. But do stayed tuned for a bonus tomorrow.
Resident Alien -- Being Dutch in America 