Psionic Blue

I went for a week this November, as I do every year, to the Supercomputing Conference. This year it was held in New Orleans. The weather down there was perfect, and for non-vegetarian folks the food was great too. We went down and visited the 9th ward was heavily damaged when the levees failed during Hurricane Katrina. I have a ton of pix from there, but I'll just post a few stand outs. New:

Old:

I saw these birds there and they were just mesmerizing:

We stayed in the warehouse district which has lots of museums and Art studios. Here's a cool piece I found:

A different view

I think Sophia would have really liked the Children's Museum:

Here I am

And then I came home and got Sophia a new fish for her birthday!

The end.

We sucked it up and went to Yellowstone to camp in July. We drove up Tuesday evening and stayed the night in Rexburg after a 4 hour drive. We convoyed with the Neuberts, a lovely family who have a little girl, Clara, in Sophia's PreSchool class. I got up at 6am to hit the park hard and secure a campsite since we'd been unable to make advance reservations, this being the busy season. But with two 3 year olds to contend with, we didn't even get into the cars until 8:15 am. The road construction was heavy into West Yellowstone and we were just barely getting into the park by 10am. Since the guidebook says all the campsites are full by 11 we were kind of SOL. So we drove around all day Wednesday trying to find accomodations. We went up to Mammoth and stopped there,

and then went out to Slough Creek and had a little picnic, and then down to Tower Junction were we gassed up and got some snacks before stopping at Roosevelt Ranch and making some calls at the pay phones to see if we could get reservations any where. Yellowstone has ZERO reception for AT&T users, and a little for those with Verizon, which is a chancy proposition. Basically the only place you can hope to make calls is in and around Old Faithful. After much tooth gnashing we decided to stay outside the park in Soda Butte campsite, beyond the North-East entrance. So we made the long drive out there... and it was closed. Every campsite in Wyoming and Montana was closed because they'd had a triple bear "incident". Two folks injured, one dead. So we asked the Ranger for recommendations and they said to stay at Hoosiers, which we did. A little pricey at $145, which I guess was the "Every Campsite is closed" rate, but clean and comfortable.

Here's the office

Bubbles!

Here we are making Marshmallows on my nostalgia-purchased Dual Fuel Stove:

We went and got pricey pizza at the bar across the street, and then went off to read bed time stories and go to sleep. Rob and I got up at 5:30am the next morning and drove back in to the park to secure ourselves a site at the "first come first served" campsite at Norris. Here's the massive Bison herd we say just after 6am coming into eastern Yellowstone:

Baby Bison-

I like this one's beard

Lots of fog still in the valley still at 6:30 am, just past Tower Falls:

It was so foggy we had trouble reading road signs

Here we are approaching Mammoth Hot Springs after securing our campsite and driving back out to get everyone.

What everyone takes a picture of:

The family unit

Hot day

I'm the Queen of Mammoth Hill!

Sleeping Monster cannot stop us from enjoy the Norris Geyser Basin!

Blorble Blorble!

KerSplash!

Finally awake, with Clara

We barely caught this geyser erupting in the Fire Hole area

Close up, after all the excitement

Yellowstone Post Office

Sleepy Sophia in front of the new yet-to-be-completed Visitor Center

Cute girls at the Old Faithful lodge

I can stand on my own Momma!

Old Faithful Erupting:

Then we drove out to Yellowstone Lake. Yellowstone Lake is the largest freshwater lake above 7,000 feet in North America. In winter, ice nearly 3 feet thick covers much of the lake, except where shallow water covers hot springs. The lake freezes over by early December and can remain frozen until late May or early June. The water, even at the height of summer is rarely over 40 degrees, which explains why we didn't say any water skiers.