Thursday, September 27, 2012

The Great American Bison

When I was a kid I thought my Dad was a government spy. I also thought that he was 19 years old. I was positive that he had never told a lie in his entire life (which is why I still won't eat broccoli becasue it will make little trees grow out of my ears). And I was pretty sure he knew the names of everyone in the world, because he always knew what to call them when they we driving poorly. "Get out of the way Joe!" "C'mon Suzzy! Use your blinker!"

Above and beyond anything else that I knew about my father, I knew that his favorite animal was a buffalo. Occasionaly as a child my whole family would pile into our 9 passenger van and we would drive for days and days (Texas to Wyoming) for the sole purpose of seeing some buffalo. When we finally arrived at the buffalo we would park the van and wait while my Dad and Devin counted the buffalo. They kept a tally of all the animals we had seen on the trip, from ground squirels to deer, and the vacation wasn't over untill we had seen more buffalo than all the other animals combine. We stopped for EVERY buffalo, even if it was dead... especially if it was dead.

Somehow, I have managed to look back on those family vaccations with a inexplicable amount  of nostalgia. So when Mark suggested we go to Yellowstone I was all in. We went with our friends Dan and Jacquie Bergquist. Here's a chronicle of our journey.

May 26th:
We arrived in Yellowstone today. It was snowing despite being May. Ten seconds after arriving at the park Mark had to pee, so we pulled off the main road, but he decided to hold it when we discovered that we had company.

That's 6 buffalo for our tally and we've only been here for 60 seconds! Dad would be so proud. Then, I taunted a buffalo: (in case you can't tell I'm holding a bag of beef jerky)

Then I lost count of all the buffalo:

We saw buffalo in the mist:

After some geysers and things not involving buffalo, the highlight of the day came. To understand my excitement about this you need to have familiarized yourself with "The Guy on the Buffalo" a classic you-tube musical. If you have not watched this you are FORBIDDEN from continuing this blog post and I  have graciously provided you with a link to it's glory: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5Lmkm5EF5E

Awesome right? So now that you've watched "The Guy on a Buffalo" you'll understand why this was the highlight of my trip. We were walking in West Yellowstone when we happened upon a shop with a bunch of taxidermy animals, western attire, and a sweet old lady with a camera. 


That is right ladies and gents, I am riding on a buffalo! I dun pa proud. 

Monday, September 24, 2012

We're not ready for kids

I already wrote this blog post and I thought I published it but someone informed me that it somehow disappeared like socks in the laundry. So I'm re-writing it. Now the details aren't exactly fresh in my memory but here's what I recall.

It was a hot day in March. Mark and I we super excited to go to the festival of colors in Provo. If you've never been to the Holi Festival in Provo, Here's what you need to know: 500 Mormons, 25 Hindu's


In our fresh white shirts, ready for fun, Mark and I, as well as my cousin Sara and her hubby Tyler, drove to the Hari Krishna temple in Spanish Fork... well we tried. The closest parking was like 10 miles away from the temple (this number might be exaggerated slightly by my memory but it's not likely; I mean 500 Mormons right?). So we had to walk, and walk and walk; like the pioneer children only we were walking toward a Hindu temple not a LDS one. Blasphemy?

When we finally arrived my flat feet were grumpy. Regardless, we bought colored chalk and waited for the party to begin. I was walking across the plaza when this malicious, little punk kid (no older than 10) comes out of nowhere and hits the bottom of my chalk bag, making colored dust fly into my face and up my unprepared nose. I'm not exactly known for my patience and mild temper, and even on a good day I would have yelled at the kid. But, the chalk that I inhaled must have been blocking my brain cells from communicating with the "appropriate reactions" part of my brain so my grumpy feet took over the thinking and decided to elbow the kid in the face... hard. The following is not an inaccurate representation of what it may have looked like:




He cried, I felt a mild twinge of guilt, but the little punk deserved it. This is why we are not ready for kids.

On the brighter side, here's a fun photo we took: