Yellowstone 2018 part 1

It was Madison's year to join us at Yellowstone. She was so excited.
Day 1: Wednesday June 27

 Her face after we told her that's where we're going to go swimming at.

Derek forgot to grab the charger for the old video recorder, but he was super awesome about letting Madi take photos with his camera. She was all about helping Uncle Derek carry the tripod and had no problems sitting forever waiting for animals.

"Truffula Trees"

Madi was also all about helping start fires every night.

 Nachos for dinner.

 Oreo S'mores... S'moreos for dessert.

Lots of scoots around the campground.

 Nightly walks along the river because it "looks like a painting".

Day 2: Thursday June 28
The day that Madi became the lucky bear charm.

Did some walking among the wildflowers.

It got really hot but Madi didn't have a shirt on under her sweater so we went back to camp for her to change. Lucky for us we were able to see a bull moose! The first time I've seen one in Yellowstone. He had such a huge rack, it was wide enough you could sleep in them.

One of Madi's photos.

 The first of 17 black bears (including cubs, and every shade of coat).

 Snack Time!

Taco Salad for dinner. It started to rain on us but cleared up enough for us to make sushi s'mores and go to the Ranger program about volcanic activity in the park.

Day 3: Friday June 29, 2018
It was a rainy day.
We saw Old Faithful although it was very steamy.

 Madi wasn't too excited for some other hot spring spots.
This was seriously her face at each one. 

Dunraven Pass to Tower

Derek and Madi were doing their own time-lapse and animal spotting. 

So I did one too and read. Surprised much? ;)

  We did see a lot of animals heading out to Lamar Valley.
Seeing them and getting to take pictures Madi wasn't gloomy anymore.

Golden Eagle

 "Puff Ball"

 Eagle Nest

Traffic Jam heading back towards the pass. We think it's from one of the bears we saw earlier.

Tower to Dunraven Pass. 

 These guys will steal your firewood. We caught them red-handed.

June 2018

June 2018

Went running by the folks and Elise was there working to earn money for her hammock. She kept bugging me to take pictures with Ragnar. Then she pestered me to post them so that "big cousin" (Kymmber) could see it. 

June 6

Free tickets to the USOC RSL game 

 Even though we lost, it was still a fun game.  And the team was basically Monarchs players and 2nd stringers. 5 games in 15 days, can't blame them for not playing 1st team.

Got Ragnar a new bandanna.. this is our "Max" bandanna since it's Avengers.

We're going to get it embroidered to make it official and one for Max too. 

Lunch date in SLC with Sheri and her work friends.  The motorcycle cops were also there, and since the three of them are single at the moment, they picked sitting right next to them... 

Wednesday June 13.

Treasure Hunting with Madi.  Elise was supposed to come but she was very torn over playing with legos or coming with me. As in she was almost in tears because she couldn't make a decision so I told her we'd go another time.

We went around Eden and Huntsville to get the Weber County caches for the Utah GeoTour.

 We got selected to drop off a DuckTales trackable.. we're Webby. Madi was very excited about this because it's her favorite and they always go on adventures. We left it in one of these easy to find caches hoping that it'll get picked up quickly.  Here's the link to track it.

Ragnar Wasatch Back 2018

About a month before the event, Timmy asked if I could fill a spot on their Ragnar Wasatch Back team. Thinking that I still had more time than what there really was to train and get more recovered from pneumonia, I agreed. In the end, I was by no means the fastest on the team, in fact I had the slowest pace in our van.  Legs 1 & 2 were just fine, leg 3 killed me like so much it triggered them awesome faux heart attacks.  In the end, I'm still glad I singed on.  It was another great weekend of running, eating, not sleeping, and joking with friends.

 Team Name

141: Get A Whiff of This

Van 1: Jen, Debbie, Rob, Blake, Matt, Cathy

Van 2: Me, Kurt, Josh, Dave, Brooke, Timmy.

All but Dave, Brooke, Kurt, and Myself work for or have retired from the corrections side of law enforcement.

We took Dave's truck so we hauled a mattress along for the ride.  It was one of the best ideas ever.

So we had these hats..

 Old school football helmet.

 Major Exchange #1 in Eden.

It was for a free bag.. I tend to get them free bags every year to put my shoes in.  They're cheap and fall apart not long afterwards but that's the point of getting them.

We were racing this team the whole time. 

 Cali found us!

 Helping with stretching by laying on people.

 Major Exchange #2 at Snow Basin

 My favorite magnet.

 Waiting for Timmy to finish Ragnar Hill.

It's funny cuz this has been a normal leg in years past..

 This guy is such a stud that he averaged like 8:15 pace up the whole dang thing. I've ran DOWN this trail before, it's intense.

 Waiting for Major Exchange #3 in Morgan, another guy that Timmy and Josh work with hooked us up with food, showers, and a quite place to take the shortest of naps.

 His kids drew this for us.

At one of the minor exchanges watching the moon rise.

 That wildlife van had all the eyes glowing.

 We couldn't sleep at the next Major Exchange, we had to go down to one of the minor ones at the Coalville rodeo fairgrounds.  Since I brought the mattress I got to sleep on it in the back of the truck.

 It was the coldest night ever! None of us got any sleep because we were so cold and our feet were blocks of ice.  We woke up with frost on everything and all the drinks in the truck bed were frozen.

 Dave showed us this little piece of history.  Apparently this guy later joined the church and moved out here to Utah.  Don't know why his family wanted this on his tomb stone though.

 Josh.

 Lots of funny dancing when crossing the street.

Brooke and Timmy.

 Waiting for Timmy to finish basically Ragnar hill part 2.  It was hot so I hung out in the shade of the tables.

Coming into the finish. 

 Timmy is a beast. They made a last minute change.. well they claimed they changed it a month before but you would only know about it if you had their app- which is a crappy app and unreliable so none of us wasted our phone space downloading it.  Anyways, it added more mileage to Tim's and Brooke's last legs. 

This was Timmy's last leg's elevation:

The whole gang. 

 Van #2

Josh's video of his perspective.. so of course it has a lot of him and Brooke.

Bonus! Max at his prom that same night.