A warm summer Sunday in Acadia National Park. Mount Desert Island, Maine.

A few more pictures of navigating the sandstone maze that is the Fiery Furnace.

I love the desert. I love red dirt. I love red rocks.

In July Jeff, Andy, and I biked from West Glacier, Montana to Vancouver, British Columbia. The whole trip was about 900 miles and it took exactly 2 weeks.

Our first day we biked through Glacier National Park on the Going to the Sun Road, it was quite an epic start.

Update: This hike was 13 miles long and after all was said and done I think Mom may have been the least tired.

We drove up to Glacier. Everyone was feeling groovy.

The last of the pictures from Yellowstone. Most of these are taken early in the morning at Mammoth Hot Springs.

On Sunday we drove to Tower Junction on the only road in Yellowstone that is open during the winter to do some cross country skiing on the 10 mile Chittenden Loop Trail.

Practically the whole way out on the loop was uphill. When we got to the top the map had indicated that the remaining terrain was steeper than what we experienced coming up.

About this time we were hanging out and a fairly serious looking skier was passing by. We decided to consult with him about the rest of the trail.

I asked him if the way back was steep. He asked us if our skis had metal edges and we said they didn’t. Regarding the way we were about to go his exact words were “I wouldn’t do it”.

I laughed at this nervously, alternating between thinking he might actually be right, we should turn around, and that he was just underestimating our abilities to navigate what lay ahead. It did turn out to be steeper than the way out, but it wasn’t a big deal.

The first evening we spent the remaining daylight walking around the boardwalks of the upper and lower terraces at Mammoth Hot Springs. Say Wikipedia

Mammoth is a large hill of travertine that has been created over thousands of years as hot water from the spring cooled and deposited calcium carbonate (over two tons flows into Mammoth each day in a solution). Although these springs lie outside the caldera boundary, their energy has been attributed to the same magmatic system that fuels other Yellowstone geothermal areas.

This was my first visit to West Thumb Geyser Basin near Yellowstone Lake in the southeast corner of the park.

Our second day we drove over the the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone and walked over to Inspiration Point on the north rim. The road was closed and we had the place all to ourselves.

We also did a 5 mile out and back to Cascade Lake, where we saw a couple of mellow looking bison hanging out under a tree.

In the evening we ended up checking out the geothermal features at Mammoth Hot Springs. I hadn’t been there all summer and it was interesting to see how the area changed.