After church, I went with my friends Jason, Klara, and Eva to Crab Orchard, a park in southern Illinois that we have explored several times recently. This time we checked out “Harmony Trail” as well as some unnamed areas. It was a beautiful day, and we enjoyed the areas we visited.
Sabbath morning we went to church in Powell. It was a very small group, maybe eight of us altogether. We had a nice lesson study, but because the pastor was away, there was no church or fellowship lunch that week. So after Sabbath school we continued on our way.
One stretch of highway was an unusual blood-red color. It doesn’t show perfectly in the photo below (I took it while driving), but you get the general idea.
With Eugene and Heidi gone, my mom and I decided we might as well head on home too. We were both satisfied with what we had seen and were ready to head back. While my mom was purchasing some items at a local convenience store, she saw a marten—something I’ve always wanted to see in the wild, and I was disappointed I missed it. That was the second rare animal she had been privileged to see alone!
We took the northern route home, so we first drove up through Yellowstone. We ate lunch at Old Faithful at a grill, which had some very good vegetarian items on the menu. As we drove the loop around Yellowstone Lake we came across a beautiful elk with an amazing set of antlers, and later several decent herds of bison. (Unfortunately we could not photograph the elk. The road was congested with a long line of cars from both directions, all stopping for this one animal. The park rangers were taking people by the arm and threatening to handcuff people who were getting too close. So I decided to just drive on.) The scenery through the eastern Yellowstone entrance, along the Shoshone River, was absolutely amazing, so beautiful and majestic. A sign indicated that it was grizzly country, but we did not see any bears.
By Thursday our supply of clean clothing was running low, so we decided to do laundry. Fortunately the laundry prices were not as outrageous as the shower prices had been. I had learned a computer with Internet access was freely available to all campers, so while my mom was working on the laundry I decided to go check my email. There was nothing interesting, but at least I wasn’t thinking about it anymore. (Okay, I admit it: My life revolves around email.)
We went on another wildlife hunt, this time heading towards the Snake River pullout. My mom wanted to check on canoeing, kayaking, and rafting costs, but it turned out that the reservations office was located elsewhere. (It was an interesting road going down to the river: 19% grade!)
My mom and I were the two photographers in the group, and we were both eager to get some nice sunrise and sunset pictures in the Tetons. So Wednesday morning we both got up at 5:45 and headed to an overlook at Signal Mountain to see what we could find.
On the way there I happened to see a moose feeding in a pond. It was quite exciting, since moose were one of the big animals we were really hoping to see. We took a few pictures, and then continued on up to the overlook. Unfortunately the view we found was a bit disappointing. But on the way back we were elated to find that the mother moose had been joined by her calf. So we spent more time photographing them.