Christmas in Utah (and ID, MT, & WY)

We were blessed to be able to go to Melis's folk's place for Christmas this year.

We couldn't resist dressing Abigail up in her Santa Baby outfit again, to the delight of Grandpa & Grandma.Our Christmas present from them was a trip to Yellowstone - in the thick of winter! What a thrill (& chill!) it was to see the area covered in snow.
We took a snow coach in (pictured a few pics below), and learned a lot from our tour guide, who doubles as a park ranger during the summer. Of the many interesting things we saw was the Madison River (any guesses who it was named by?), merely inches deep, doesn't freeze all winter!!! It was 5 degrees when we were there, and it gets a lot colder than that. Any other river would freeze - but this was is heated by crazy hot water flowing steadily into it by the geysers & other geothermal features that help make this place famous. This makes it a haven of life for creatures big & small, like these Trumpeter Swans.
Firehole Falls.

On the loop near Old Faithful.
The obligatory shot of Old Faithful herself going off.

The Lion Group, which I thought was more impressive than OF.

We found out that you can tell the temperature of the water by the color of the algae. If I'm not mistaken, this orange/brown color was roughly 150. It's amazing how a frozen tuft of grass can live there, too. I love God's creation!

After walking around the Old Faithful area for an hour & a half, we jumped back on the snow coach and rolled down the road to our next stop.

Beautiful wife & daughter. Abigail handled the trip quite well. I don't know that she'd readily sign up to do it again tomorrow, but the dozen or so layers of clothes kept her quite warm. She even fell asleep toward the end of the OF area. As I took her into a warm yurt they had set up, I was met with the stares of about 15 senior citizens - one of which even grabber her camera. I nervously unbundled my wide-eyed daughter, and was relieved to find her warm from head to toe. Here's a fun fact for you: When it gets cold outside, Elk need to start burning body fat at zero degrees to keep warm. Bison can stay cozy until 20 below, but moose (yup, our favorite animal!) stay plenty comfy (e.i., don't start burning their fat reserves) until the mercury dips below -50 degrees! In fact, they stay so warm that they're one of the few animals that actually goes up in elevation for the winter! Gotta love those moose.

On our way back we saw plenty of wildlife, like this coyote.

And this cow elk, gleaning a few remaining nibbles before a long winter.

And another coyote, who was enjoying what looked like some unfortunate frozen animal. Speaking of coyote, Abee is learning qutie a few animal sounds (not too many words in english yet - we're still at the animal sound level ;-). One of her favorites is the high pitched 'Ooouuuuwwwwww. . .' howl of the aforementioned canine.

Sun Dog (on the right) above the Madison.

Just had to add this pic of my hot wife & sweet kiddo on the snow coach with the sun going down.

At the entrance to Ellowstone NP.

Coming back into West Yellowstone, where we spent two nights.

Yup, I'd say Abee enjoyed herself.

And because we're just a little crazy, we thought we'd go snowshoeing with our old Salt Lake church's Youth Group in Big Cottonwood Canyon, just above SLC. We went to one of Melis & my favorite places where we often went when we lived there, Willow Lake.

One of the things we miss is the aspen trees, which aren't to be found on the west side of the Cascades (at least not that we've found).

I think this might be my favorite pic of this post.

Finally a little blue sky! But it didn't last for long.

Group shot, with Solitude Ski Resort in the background.

It didn't show up quite as clear as we wanted, but can you see the name of the HS YG? Impact.

Melis gets credit for pointing out this rather funky lookin' tree as we made our descent.

Hope your Christmas adventures were enjoyable and safe (but not too safe ;-). And mostly I hope that you were struck with an increased appreciation for the power of God and His overwhelming grace for us.