A Much Needed Night Out

I'll get back to the Yellowstone trip soon but in the meantime:

This past week seemed to drag on. I couldn't even tell you what happened on Monday...that's how far away it seems. The past weekend was so emotionally draining I just felt like giving up. The anniversary of my mother's death coupled with three financial disasters involving my father, and the 10th anniversary of 9/11 left me feeling in a funk before the week even began. Throw in the first full week of school and I was pretty much spent by the time Friday rolled around. JO and I had made plans to go to Alibi at the Liberty Hotel but after dinner I told him I just wanted to go home. He convinced me to go and I'm so glad he did.

Not only did we have a great time at Alibi, but we discovered that the Liberty Hotel has live music in their upstairs lobby bar on Friday nights. We'll definitely be going back to enjoy that again. We also decided to walk home. I'm not sure why but I'm so glad we did. We discovered a new, awesome bar called Firebred Saints. It had a an electronic etch a sketch projected on the wall and a cool display that mixed up the words from the closed captioning on the tv. We also discovered that Kendall Square has quite a few places on our "to-visit" list.

I feel like I'm constantly being told how horrible a place Cambridge is. Everywhere I go people say it's dirty, it's crowded, it's too hard to get around. Well you know what? It's my city and it's where I love to live! Tonight I was reminded why I love living here!

Marmot Pictures

As I mentioned in my last post, we had a lot of fun with all of the marmots in Mammoth Hot Springs. Apparently we only got one picture, and it's not the best. But, picture this little guy and 20 of his friends all hanging out together.

Yellowstone- Day 3

On the third day in Yellowstone we headed to the Mammoth Hot Springs area. I had seen one of the features in this area on a postcard and I couldn't wait to get there. We drove from Canyon Lodge and the drive was awesome. It left some of the more populated areas in favor of some of the more isolating areas. This led to plenty of wildlife sightings, including a couple of bears. Look closely, and you'll see the bear.




We weren't able to take the detour to Lamar Valley, which has been described as the Serengeti of the U.S. If we ever go back I definitely want to go there. I forget where this was, and the name of it, but this is the largest hot spring in the park.




Along the way we stopped to get this guy's picture. He was huge, and a bit too close.



Mammoth is the headquarters of the park and kind of feels like Disney World. It's very modern and there's real grass. There are also tons of marmots, that are perfectly willing to pose for pictures. After grabbing lunch we headed over to the hot spring area. Part of the trail is driveable but we decided to walk it since the traffic was a bit of a hassle.




The features in this part of the park were breathtaking. Not only were there hot springs and mud pots, but there were coral looking things that had been formed from the acidic erosion in the area.



It's weird that something so devoid of life can be so mesmerizing.


After several hours of touring, we headed out of the park for the night. We stayed in West Yellowstone which is literally ten minutes outside of the park boundaries. It's a really fun tourist town and we really had fun. We did a little shopping, sampled some local brews, and watched and IMAX movie about Yellowstone.



Our motel was super cute, and really comfy after "roughing" it at the Canyon Lodge for a few days.