i used to hate birds.

I went geocaching for the first time on Sunday!  It was so much fun even though it was hot and the mosquitoes are awful!  Don't know what geocaching is?  Check out www.geocaching.com to get an idea.  Basically it's a treasure hunt with a GPS.  My friend and I used the GPS devices on our phones making things very easy..

Our first stop was the Wapato Access Greenway Trail where 4 or 5 caches were hidden.  We were poking around the parking lot trying to find the first one when I realized how sketchy we looked.  I think one guy thought we were trying to steal his bike (yikes!).   But that's the price you pay for geocaching....  We found the first cache in a metal fence thing.

The cache is that little grey box stuck to the top of the inside of the fence- it was magnetic and just big enough to hold a pencil and logbook where people write their geocaching names (mine is now Superjen).

Our second find was a peanut butter jar in a tree along the trail:

Random low-budget trinkets and …

Yes I made it up to Ridgefield yesterday morning... It was fun but I definitely didn't get the feeling that I'd missed a whole lot- except of course those coyote pups I keep seeing pictures of on Flickr!

The bunnies are still everywhere you look..


Lots of young coots and grebes around... I thought it was cute that they hung out together...
(unless of course I'm wrong and that's not a coot)

I decided to brave the Kiwa Trail despite my lack of bug spray- for some reason when I returned from Yellowstone I took it out of the car darn it!

This pretty snake was sunning itself next to the water...

I made it through the first part of the forested area with only 2 new mosquito bites... Not too bad.  Out in the meadow I took a bunch of pictures of a mystery bird in flight:

I was hoping it might be an owl but the only picture with the head is way too blurry for me to tell...


The meadow is in full bloom...

Hiding in the yellow flowers were yellowthroats...


Not hiding in the yellow we…

Yay I'm finally on my last trip post!  I'm hoping to head up to Ridgefield tomorrow to see what I've been missing the last few weeks!

Ok so our last full day at Yellowstone started off on that big hike from the last post... That evening after we'd rested a bit we decided to venture out to some places we didn't have a chance to visit yet..  We took a little dirt road along the road to Tower and found a new friend:

He did not stick around long...

We eventually reached the turn-off for the petrified tree and once again there was a black bear wandering around the valley.  For some reason I took over  a hundred pictures of it, 7 of which I kept, none of which are that great.  Haha.

Apparently I changed my settings sometime during this viewing..


A little while later down the road was another big group of people.  Luckily it was right next to a big parking area and we pulled over and parked quickly.   This was probably my favorite sighting of the trip:


A grizzly bear and tw…