Bison!

Three months before our wedding day, Ed and I drove halfway across the country together. We knew that if we spend 1500 miles together in a car without killing each other, then we just might be able to make our marriage work.

And so we drove through Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and to the western side of Wyoming, stopping at all the tourist spots, until we finally arrived at our final destination: Yellowstone National Park.

Our first impression of Yellowstone was that Yellowstone is BIG. There is no way to see Yellowstone in just one day. Everything about Yellowstone is BIG; the geysers, the waterfalls, the canyons, and the bison. Bison are HUGE. And a little big scary.

We were staying in the park for six days. The very first morning we looked out our cabin window and saw a bison. A big bison. A bison so large that I didn’t want to leave our cabin.

Top o’ the mornin’ to you

It didn’t help that we were given this flier in our park information.

As we were walking along a bridge one day, we noticed a bison behind us. As the bison approached the bridge, he started speeding up. I got a little nervous, and so I started speeding up. Ed claims he wasn’t as nervous as I was, but I did notice that he kept up with me. The bison started running across the bridge. Ed and I starting running across the bridge. All I wanted to do was get back into the car, although if the bison decided to tackle it, the car would have been totaled.

As we got back to our car, the bison crossed the bridge and slowed down, climbing up the grassy hill by the side of the road. He was just as nervous about crossing that bridge as I was of him!

As you can already predict, neither one of us was gored by a bison.

And we lived happily ever after. So far, anyway.

Mama's Losin' It

Written in response to the following prompt for Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop: A vacation to remember.

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More Blizzard Pictures (for my sister in California)

…Puddle hadn’t seen a single snowflake yet. Just let it snow, he wistfully pleaded to the sky. There had to be snow!
~from Toot & Puddle: Let It Snow, by Holly Hobbie

 Before the storm really got started

Just as the storm was beginning, I took this picture of our patio. When I looked at the weather radar online, a huge, blue mass with a swirly wind circle was heading our way. And did we ever get snow!

One winter morning Peter woke up and looked out the window. Snow had fallen during the night. It covered everything as far as he could see.
~from The Snowy Day, by Ezra Jack Keats

Our patio after the storm

Our driveway had a huge four foot tall drift crossing it. Lily decided to build a tunnel. “It’s warmer inside!” she discovered. In order to be able to get our cars out of our garage, Ed had a daunting task ahead of him.

It took Ed all morning — about five hours — to shovel that driveway. I helped him a little but mostly I played with Lily and Emmy and brought Ed water and food. His mustache and beard were frosty and his brown hat turned white, but he was loving every minute of it. Until he came inside and realized how sore he was, that is.

Snow is lots of fun,
All right!
It gives you
A big appetite.
~from Snow, by Roy McKie and P.D. Eastman

Emmy, standing by a drift next to our neighbor’s fence.

Waves of snow in front of our neighbor’s house.

Now that the snow is over, it’s cold.

But the front door was open and his father’s footprints went out into the snow–
and it was 50 below zero that night.
~from 50 Below Zero, by Robert Munsch and Michael Martchenko

Not 50 below zero cold, but rather 10 degrees cold. Not as cold as the weatherman predicted, but cold enough to make us stay inside during our second snow day. We’re back to school tomorrow…

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