flag football ..

cash and his buddies played flag football tonight .. 

they are so fun to watch play ..

a bunch of very happy 8 & 9 year olds running around trying to grab the other teams flags ..

this is justin ..

he can run like the wind .. you always want justin on your team ..

he plays sports with an intensity that i have never seen ..

uncle jay went with us to help cheer on the team ..

this is our coach .. mason's grandpa .. 

he knows a few things about football .. 

but most of all he knows how to relate to the boys .. 

it was a great way to spend a tuesday evening ..

not to mention that we stop by braums on the way home for a big scoop of victory ice cream 

tool man ..

we have this old rusted wagon that has seen better days ..

cash started taking it apart in grandpa's shop a few weeks ago ..

it has now worked its way down to our house ..

notice that his tool box is on his skate board ..

it was to heavy for him to carry all the way out to the driveway ..

so he put it on his skate board and pushed it .. 

it worked on it until dark .. 

he only came in one time because he needed me to hold the wrench so that he could use the socket wrench on it .. the bolt was rusted on really tight ..

he has taken it all apart and stacked all the pieces together ..

it is now sitting in my front flower bed ..

he needs to check with grandpa to see if he wants any of the nuts and bolts before he rebuilds it ..

flag football ..

cash is going to play flag football with a few of his buddies ..

they practiced at our house last night .. 

ellie helped out to ..

san fran ..

cash took his camera on this trip ..

he snapped this pic of ellie and i before we headed out to catch the ferry to alcatraz

cash was planning a prison break ..

ellie thought alcatraz was like Azkaban ..

minus the dementors of course 

the library .. because they had a lot of time to read ..

the cells are 5 feet wide and 9 feet tall .. 

not much room ..

they say that was the worst part about alcatraz .. 

the view of the city .. so close but yet so far away ..

rocky mountain national park ..

this leg of our trip started in estes park colorado ..

we spent a few days in rocky mountain national park .. 

there is nothing like the mountains in colorado ..

don't even get me started on how good the air smells ..

there is nothing better than the heavy scent of pine trees 

we hiked around bear lake ..

the kids wanted to swim in the worst way ..

but we did not .. 

cash made a rock with a face ..

see the 2 small rocks that are eyes and then the frumpy smile on the rock .. 

yellowstone ..

you can see the steam from the hot springs as you drive thru yellowstone ..

you can also smell the sulfur ..

such a nice smell !

redwoods ..

we made it to the pacific coast before the sunset last night .. 

we found all kinds of sea life in the tide pools ..

starfish .. 

sea anemones ..

we caught the sunset to ..

we hiked the tall tree trail today ..

this is the part of the old growth forest that is still left .. 

it took 40 years for the redwoods to become a national forest ..

by the time the legislation was passed deeming it a national park 90% of the redwoods had already been cut down ..

the trees in the old growth forest can be up to 2000 years old ..

to say they are big is an understatement ..

the tallest tree is 379 feet tall ..

it is not marked within the forest and there are no trails leading to it ..

this is to protect the tree .. 

tetons .. jenny lake

we took the shuttle across lake jenny to hike up to the hidden falls and inspiration point ..

hidden falls ..

we stopped and had a picnic lunch here .. 

the top of inspiration point .. 

lake jenny ..

this barn is on mormon row .. this is the barn that you see on all the postcards

the tetons are magnificent ..

of all the places that we have been the tetons are my favorite ..

yellowstone day 2 ..

today was out last day in yellowstone so we thought

we would go for a swim in the boiling river ..

or i mean .. jeff and the kids went for a swim in the boiling river ..

a hot spring dumps about 3000 gallons of boiling water into the ice cold river every minute ..

they said there were super hot spots and super cold spots ..

it was also waterfall day ..

this is the waterfall from artists point in the grand canyon of yellowstone

thomas moran has made this view famous with his paintings of yellowstone ..

this was one of the views that moran used to persuade congress to make yellowstone a national park ..

breathtaking doesn't even come close to describing the park .. 

the other side of the falls from artists point ..

the mineral stains on the rock give the canyon it beautiful colors .. 

this was our last stop of the day ..

cash does not want to hear me say 

"oh my goodness .. look at that" one more time 

yellowstone is a huge huge huge park .. 

it covers 2,221,766 acres 

3% in montana, 96% in wyoming and 1% in idaho

1% has been developed for tourism ..

that leaves 99% totally undeveloped and natural

just to give you an idea of how big it is ..

it takes an hour to an hour and half to get from the gates at west yellowstone to the 

first ranger information station at madison .. and it's just 14 miles !

yellowstone reintroduced wolves in 1995 and 1996

they are now thriving ..

there are 12 -15 packs of wolves with 7-19 wolves in each pack 

we didn't get to see any wolves or any bears

but we did see elk, pronghorn deer and bison 

tomorrow we are going to float the snake river and go onto jackson hole and the tetons ..