Yellowstone Tuesday

The smoke from the burning West carries for hundreds of miles on the winds, and has been keeping me trapped inside my house. Breathing too much of the smoke contaminated air gives me asthmatically painful lungs. I resent missing outdoor time as summer wanes, but I am mindful of the fact that dozens of families have lost their homes and possessions to the fires. Since I am housebound, I have been spending many hours working on my Yellowstone Photo Journal.

I took hundreds of photos while we were on our trip. I've sorted them into files for each day, named and numbered them, and started building my journal. When I was still in the working world, I prepared publications for the foundation where I was employed. I enjoy that sort of thing, so I use the some of the same techniques for myself. Because I am somewhat compromised visually, I now need to enlarge photos for my own ease of viewing. This means my photos will take up a lot of space, in addition to the narrative, even though I do a lot of cropping to home in on the important parts. I average only two to a page. So, even though I am using only a select few of the large number I took, I am already on page 39 of my vacation journal and I have just finished composing Day 3 (Tuesday, August 7).

My head and my time have still been in Yellowstone, so I'll share a few pictures from Day 3.

Anne Marie and Samantha the golden retriever climbed down the steep bank so Sam could drink from Lewis Lake.

I am at the viewing area of the Jackson Lodge, where we lunched. The smoky air makes the mighty Tetons almost fade away.

Old Faithful steaming and splashing preliminary to the big eruption.

There were ravens at Old Faithful, totally unfazed by the thermal activity surrounding them.

Megan running with Sam behind the Old Faithful Inn. This was before we knew she had a cracked leg bone.