Nursery
This week, I was supposed to be enjoying the history and scenery in Yellowstone National Park, but Ben’s got a deadline. So, TJ is having his first vacation without us. We sent him on an airplane to visit Poppa & Nanna, and they’re in Yellowstone. In my family, no news is good news, so I haven’t heard from him since he arrived at their house. They’ll probably call to let me know he’s safely on the plane on the way home next week.
This week is VBS at the church family I attend. One of the gals in charge called me about a month ago and asked if I could help out in the nursery. Sure, I might as well. The girls were signed up and we waited for the week of fun & games. So, each day from 9 to noon we head to the church. The older two go to their class and I’ve got 4 or 5 just about two year olds and one little baby.
Monday, I didn’t know how many to expect, so we played it by ear. We went out to the playground when the PreK class finished and played for a bit while a helper stayed with the littlest (the Mom was set to come in to nurse in that time, so it was good timing). Then, they just played & had one snack break.
Tuesday, I asked for art supplies. We were mostly inside, and a snack. The crayons and markers arrived and we made a poster of hands and scribbles.
Today, I forgot my songs in sign language book, but we made sure to go out on the playground, had our set snack time and watched a Veggie Tale video, and made individual hand pages to take home.
So, two more days to go. I’ve been looking up ideas so that I don’t go stir crazy. I’m going to grab my sign-songs book and I’ve got a craft box and some ideas. We’ll make hand puppets one day and macaroni pictures another. I may even try a popsicle stick puzzle.
Poppa said,
August 10, 2008 @ 11:02 am
Hi, Sweetums,
“No news” also means there’s no cell service in YNP. TJ’s fine; the trip was fun. TJ said the best part of the trip was seeing Old Faithful erupt. We saw it erupt three times while we were in that area. It erupts about every 92 minutes. We saw it three times. Did I already say we were at Old Faithful a while?
TJ should have brought a wind breaker or rain shell for the variable mountain weather. We got wet a couple of times and saw some lightning. He handled the altitude well. He’s now been to Montana as well as Wyoming, since we exited and re-entered the park on the north side where better shopping and cheaper fuel were available in Gardiner, MT. Diesel in the park was almost $5 a gallon. At the low park speed limits, my truck got about 22 miles a gallon and we drove 400 sightseeing miles on less than half a tank. Most vehicles get their best gas mileage at the lowest speed that keeps them in overdrive and the 45 MPH park speed limit is a perfect match to my truck’s gearing. Pulling a trailer at freeway speeds, I get about 15 MPG and the top half of the tank only gets us about 285-300 miles. Some performance parts would help both those numbers and make pulling grades with a trailer easier. Anyone want to give me a Bank’s Engineering gift certificate?
Yellowstone has more to see than any documentary had led me to believe. Aside from 10,000 geo-thermal features (the most in any one place in the world), there are enough lava, ash, pumice, basalt, obsidian, and travertine formations to keep a rockhound happy for weeks (look only; don’t move, take, or split open). There’s also a 1,000 foot deep river gorge that wasn’t in the advance literature and the Fort Yellowstone buildings from the days when the Army policed the park before the creation of the Park Service. It was an Army officer who laid out the park’s figure 8 road pattern. Just going around the southern loop from our campsite to Old Faithful and back is about a hundred miles.
The bison were ubiquitous enough to get to be a nuisance (either they block the road or tourists with no consideration for others do). We were close enough at times (from the safety of my truck) to hear the big males snorting (somewhat warningly, I thought). Our first encounter with one was nose to nose on the road in the dark. I could see a lumbering, shaggy silhouette in our lane and when I hit the high beams, there was a monster male (that looked as big as my pickup) casually asserting pedestrian right of way. J & TJ slept through the encounter and I carried them into the trailer and dumped them on their beds for the night.
We saw lots of elk; they walk and lie around quite close to roads and cabins. Most any of their racks would make great wall hangings for years of enjoyment. Saw some deer and a black bear. Didn’t see any moose or grizzlies. Caught a glimpse of something doglike at night. Probably a coyote. No definite wolf sightings. Saw eagles (Bald and Golden), ravens, and an osprey.
Chatted with Park Rangers and other visitors and learned that the geothermal features change from time to time. Old ones dry up, new ones emerge, and sometimes the ground just caves in from erosive forces beneath it (stay on paths and boardwalks to avoid being parboiled). The geysers at the lake shore haven’t erupted in nine years (Fishing Cone was still under water from the cold, snowy winter and late thaw this year). The highest erupting geyser in the world last erupted in 2005. Some erupt every few minutes. And so on.
At Norris Basin, J claimed that he needed to be carried back up to the parking lot so I slung him fireman style across my shoulders. We got several concerned looks until J grinned triumphantly at them (when he wasn’t complaining that he needed to be carried, he was running ahead of us). Comments included, “dead kid,” “invalid,” and one Asian woman said longingly, “now that’s the way I need to go.”
We drove through part of Grand Teton NP and Teton NF on the way home and we bought TJ a Yellowstone sweatshirt and a Grand Teton tee shirt. In Teton NF, I came the closest I’ve ever come to hitting a deer. I usually scan left and right as I’m driving but I was looking at some mules on my side of the road and doing 65 MPH when a blacktail doe got her boogey on from the other side of the highway and just made it past my fender safely. It happened so fast Mom didn’t even see it happen.
Mom just left to drop J with his parents and take TJ to lunch. I’m going to go soak my sciatica.
Love,
Poppa