Monday, August 25, 2008

A New Beginning


So a few weeks ago (by a few weeks I mean almost 2 months), Scott and I finally acted on our fantastic idea to start a blog. The problem is that by the time we decided to write a second entry, Scott had forgotten the password AND the email address used to sign in, so here we go again! We are starting anew!

Since the wedding we have just been trying to get settled in. Apparently, this takes a while haha. We are STILL moving things around in our apartment, trying to find a proper place for everything. I have been working and Scott has been taking care of our home and our puppy, Brixton. And thanks to my awesome 7 days on/7 days off work schedule, we have been trying to take as many adventures as possible before school starts!

Trip #1: Yellowstone National Park

Since Scott had never been to Yellowstone and I hadn't been in years, we decided to make the drive up for a few days. I think our trip ended up being even more eventful than we expected it to be, here are some highlights:

1. We got started kind of late on the drive up, AND got stuck in traffic. Since we were running way behind, we decided to stop and get something to eat as we were driving through Rexburg, Idaho. We were sitting at Sonic and who should pull up next to us? Megan Dunn (now Yaksich) and her new husband Josh! I hadn't seen Mags in years!!! So it was fun to visit with them for a bit before we had to finish our drive.

2. Due to our late start, we didn't arrive at the west entrance of the park until about midnight! The ranger in the booth kind of chuckled at us when we told him what campsite we had a reservation at and informed us that we still had about a 60 mile drive to get there. In the pitch black. And we never got above about 40 mph. We didn't get to our campsite until about 3am or so (the wrong turn that took us 20 miles out of the way didn't help) but the drive was AWESOME. We saw the most animals during that one drive including a lot of deer and elk, a coyote, and a baby buffalo that was very skittish around cars. I think the baby buffalo was one of our favorite things we saw. It was so cute!! (sidenote: this picture of the baby buffalo was NOT taken by us...but can you see why when I first saw one from far away I didn't quite know what it was?)


3. The BEST part of the trip was that my good friend from high school, Praveen, happened to be in the park at the same time, and even at the same campground! He spent a portion of the summer road biking across the country with a team to raise money for cancer research (www.illini4000.org) and they just happened to have a rest day in Yellowstone on our first full day there! Scott and Praveen and I drove around the whole day stopping at as many of the sites we could.





4. Brixton LOVES camping. I think this is mostly as a result of the fact that he loves dirt. Especially eating it! He also tried his best to stamp ants to death with his paws after tracking them with his nose. After watching him one morning though, I realized that those stampy paws don't have very good aim and so most of the time the ants escaped without coming to much harm.

Needless to say, we got home from vacation more tired than when we left, and sooooo ready for a shower!