THE NEWTON'S

  The original plan was to take a leasurely drive from our Hotel in Cody Wyoming the day after Yellowstone, and just drive straight to the hotel in South Dakota where the next day we would continue on our sightseeing... But that would be too easy- We realized Devils Tower was just a short detour from the route we were driving, so we took the detour! :)  This is a tower of stone that is just on it's own... no mountains nearby for it to have formed as part of.   The view from the loop trail at the base of it was neat, and we could watch the climbers going up the side of it while we walked around the base.  I'm so glad we stopped and made the detour to add this to our list of sights.  It really is an amazing little piece of nature.   The next day we went searching for gold! We went to a mining museum where we panned for gold, and learned how they did tunnel mining for a hundred plus years. After that we headed to Wind Cave.  It...

We left my family reunion and headed over into Yellowstone.  I've got so many pictures, but it really doesn't do the park justice- it's something that really has to be seen and experienced.  Being from Oklahoma we see Buffalo frequently, so it was a little humerous to us when around every bend into a valley area tons of cars were pulled off the road for people to take pictures of the buffalo/bison.  We only had one day to experience all we could of the park- and it is huge, so we hit some high points and had a very full day experiencing a little of each of the different area's of the park. Driving through the park we saw lots of steam vents and buffalo. Our first Stop was Old Faithful.  We had about an hour before it was set to go off, so we walked around the Geyser Hill and past Grand Geyser before settling in to wait for Old Faithful .    We saw Midway Geyser Basin, The Paint Pots... We had a little laugh at someone's juice box left on a...

We left Rich's sister and brother and their families in Keystone and headed on to Julie's family reunion in Island Park Idaho. The drive was gorgeous. I can't get enough of the views as we drove through the mountains. I was surprised at the quality of pictures I was able to get through the windshield of the car while we were speeding along at 60+ mph!  (sorry for the wierd formatting of pictures... trying different options of hosting sites here! :)) Upon arrival at the cabin in Idaho we wasted no time and started the games and fun. Grandma (my mom) had some things she shouted out and everyone that fit in the group would go and sit by the fireplace for a group picture... "A" names, Born in Utah, Born east of the missisippi, etc... it ended with all the girls and all the guys taking group pictures. The next day we went on a gorgeous hike. The kids surprised us and just took off on the hike. We had to send Rich off to catch up with them instead of tagging bac...