Shopping Lewistown..

From the 26th..
Today me and the girls went shopping in the closest bigger town, Lewistown. It's a 55 min drive from the ranch. This morning it snowed up in the mountains, or at least in areas over 5800 ft..but got a little sleet on the way and a lot of wind! For a while I thought about turn back, but as soon as I reached the highway it got better..I guess I have to get use to driving in a little rougher conditions..good we have a car with 4WD..

Lewistown is an older style town where mostly all stores are located at mainstreet. Here you'll find old stores where you still can buy items over the counter..and also of course more modern places. Not the prettiest or most charming town, but had all you need. And an old cinema, gotta go there one day!

Anyway found a nice plant store, bought an owl. Will show it later..and a plant for the kitchen. Hard to put any pots in other windows right now, Jamie reaches up everywhere.. I also found a hardware store with a huge selection of toys downstairs. And they had almost the whole collection of Melissa & Dough wooden toys!! I could buy the whole store, so many nice things, Melissa and Dough are supposed to be wooden non-toxic toys. I know you can find them in Sweden to, especially "playfood". I already know I'm gonna shop here for Natalies birthday...

Surprisingly I found a nice café Beans' n things at mainstreet that had a really good hot beverage selection, and I actually got real strong coffee! Most everywhere in the States it' s so weak..almost like tea! They also had a nice playarea for kids! I could for once enjoy a coffee...

Well after buying.a whole bunch of groceries at Albertsson's we drove back home before the girls got too tired. It's a little tricky to go shop alone with them here because usually there are no squares so you cant park and walk around.. you just have to walk along mainstreet, then pack kids in the car go to next "section of stores" and so on...I can say Jamie got tired to be put back in her carseat after a few times.. I don't blame her.. but wasn't too bad. We had a pretty good shopping trip and made it home so we could play a little outside in the sunshine.. Really pretty today with snowcapped mountains and sunshine in the afternoon!

Yellowstone...part 2

Not ready....

Totally driving since last night, 239 km..

Day 7.... Yellowstone..part 1

Well, we woke up around 6 got ready for Yellowstone National park..the first majestic park to lead all the others! Yellowstone is truly amazing, so diverse, unexpected and extreme, located right on the largest thermoactive grounds in the world! (If the vulcano erupts it will almost be a global killer....davastating for life close by and possibly affect nature all over the planet..) so here we can talk about powerful nature..

The weather was not so good today either, so we decided to drive the two left loopes around the park. While driving here you want to stop all the time to take pictures..almost around every corner you see something spectacular! There's hot springs, geysers, waterfalls, beautiful creeks, boiling mud ponds, mountains, stunning views and if you are lucky bears, moose, deer, elk bison and more.. we saw 6 or 7 bison during our trip..plus several elk ( we dont have them in Sweden. ) They are in between a "kronhjort" and a moose in size.

Our first longer stop was at the West Thumb, here you walk around and look at several small fumaroles ( its like steaming hot springs) and smaller geysers. Many of them varies in colors because of different bacterias that inhabits them. These microorganisms are diverse species that are called extremofiles and they are adapted to live in extreme environments for example high temperatures or survive in different ranges of acidic environments. The color in each pond in short terms depends on which chemical ( inorganic) compounds the bacterias 'digest'...( I will skip more detailed explanations here...but its very interesting...)

We continued up to Old Faithful..the largest geyser in the park, and a huge tourist attraction...it erupts every 88 min ( +- 10 min..) In this area there are two different lodges..(they are usually fullbooked very long time in advance.. )visitor center, gas station, grocery store, yellowstone general store, giftshops.. so all in all very busy. It was alot of people here today, and I can only imagine a day in mid july- august... Anyway the big visitor center also have classrooms and educational areas about thermoactivity,  geysers, vulcanoes etc. If we had older kids that would have been well spent time during the rain, but Natalie wanted to see the big old faithful... When we came we had a little over an hour to next predicted eruption so we ate lunch at Old faithful Inn, an amazing building with alot of history! Lunch buffe was good and healthy for around 11 usd.

In time for Old Faithful to get started we walked out and got the camera ready! ( Last time in Yellowstone 2008, me and Carolina were about to take pics the battery died...)  It was kinda misty and a little windy today so between the white sky and the steaming water it was hard to get good pictures of the eruption, but its pretty cool anyway then few seconds it lasts! Personally I think Yellowstone has so much to offer so Old Faithful isn't the most spectacular....

To be continued.. and soon pictures...So many good places to take pictures
! No need for filters here..but the beauty and colors still can't be captured...

One picture of me..06 am...like a ranger hehe..

Day 5 Wyoming..

From the 14th..

In the morning we tried to get ready pretty quick heading west, but before we start driving every day both girls need activity time...to run of some energy.. This morning all 4 girls went for a walk in this little town, Saratoga. Like I wrote yesterday it wasn't so much to do or look at here, and a rainy morning to.. One interesting thing was the Hobo hot springs. A natural hotspring you could swim in for free. We didnt take the time this morning, but we talked with a man who always sat in the water early morning..he was sure this mineral filled, 106 degrees F ( 41 degrees C) warm water had healing effects on him. I believe heat helps...

Well in our car, we drove north to Rawling and then I - 80 to Rock Springs in western Wyoming.  We ate a really fresh lunch at Applebees. It seems like we always take long lunches..but I guess that's needed..no stress or hurry when we have the two girls...

We took an exciting detour this afternoon. A little south of Rock Springs there's a National recreation area named Flaming Gorge. We drove down through the Firehole region and once again we were thrilled by the weather....we had sunshine and blue most of the day until we reached the canyon...all alone in the middle of nowhere and the sky turned black! And I mean black..It rained so heavily and the lightnings..oh my..I'm glad we were in the car and both girls were sleeping.. It's impressive how powerful the nature can be..no need for rollercoaster adrenaline kicks when your way out west...Well one sure thing is that bad weather rolls in as quick as it will go away.. As soon as we turned back we got blue sky again, and we could see all amazing rockformations and all the colors! Well worth the extra time for stunning views and the excitement!

Later we took highway 191 north all the way up to Pinedale. On the way we stopped at a very nice playground right outside the little ( kinda nasty and dirtylooking) town of Eden.. So surprising with this playground..it was perfect almost in the middle of nowhere. Well planned climbingtoys for both girls, clean and it had one regular portapotti  and one good for wheelchairs (bajjamajor) and they even smelled good..couldn't believe it... we stayed for quite a while before we hit the road to Pinedale.

We arrived pretty late to our hotel after driving exactly 300 miles
( 480 km)...