My favorite vacation pictures

Cutting to the chase--After last night's debacle, I've decided to summarize for your viewing pleasure.

This is Yellowstone Lake (Note the steam from the sulfur pools in the foreground). Is there a name for this shade of blue? Do you think the "sky just before the fast of light breaks with the sunrise" is too long (and too horribly over the top)? Probably wouldn't fit well on a Crayola label, would it?

Joe and Sam discussing perspective


The Absaroka Range in the late afternoon. Suddenly "there's gold in them-thar-hills" takes on new meaning. My camera simply could not do this effect justice. And neither can my vocabulary.



The Holy City, a rock formation in the Absaroka Mountain Range


Waiting, and waiting, and waiting for Old Faithful was . . .


well worth it!

Insert inadequate image here

The day we left Wyoming behind, we drove through the Big Horn Mountains. At ten thousand feet above sea level, we were in the clouds and looking across the terrain below. There is no picture of this because all the camera revealed was thick clouds and what looks like deep green weeds and were actually trees. Broken sections of railing told the sobering tale of drivers who didn't heed the the yellow "steep curve" signs, whose cars didn't quite follow the lead of a road that wound back on itself like a roller coaster. A mixture of fear and awe overtook all five of us and the car was strangely silent, except for the occasional gasp as we climbed to the highest points. Along the way, we stopped at overlooks and became sight-companions with another couple who had also stopped to snap pictures and stare, smiling at one another we quietly, reverently, talked about the scope of the world from that height. Somehow it seemed appropriate that we were doing this on a Sunday morning and even more appropriate that the couple who stopped with us were sheepishly late to church, so distracted they were by his handiwork.