Should we stay or should we go?

Look what's going on - 

Greg is saying he'd love to stay and just look out the window all day.  I'm saying I don't want to get stuck up here!

What a difference a month makes.

Greg has business in Montana again.

So - back to Bozeman, via Seattle.

I still think the big window at SeaTac is so cool.

We ate this time, at Anthony's restaurant. Greg is trying out the Huckleberry Slump. 

 It's not dessert because no dessert would ever be called "Slump"

We are cabin guests again. But this go around - we are the only ones staying up here. It is off season so everything is pretty much closed down.

 And - there's snow!

And there are bears around! I haven't seen any but we have been warned :-/

A Walk through a Garden

A friend and I went to the Gamble Garden in Palo Alto last week.  It is an old home preserved for the public to use and walk through (not really very museum like but still interesting - it is a lovely home the bottom floor open to just take a look around).  The home is on a very large corner lot that has lovely cutting gardens, botanical type plantings and a formal yard.  I'd never heard of this place.  I was thrilled to be invited to go.  It was a perfect day for a walk through a garden.

 My friend Lisa.

Several raised beds for annuals and perennials.

The darker flower is called Chocolate Cosmos - it has a faint smell of chocolate. :-)

The vine covering the gazebo is called Porcelain Berry Vine.

 

I'm sure I'll be back to this garden one day.

Clear(er) Day

The sky around Big Sky has been kind of hazy lately because of some fires. The caretaker, yesterday, apologized for the haze saying there are a few small fires burning in Yellowstone but believes a lot of the haze is due to the fire in Yosemite! Wow - that's along way for that smoke to travel.

 It is a clearer day today.

The Rainbow Cabins have their own small lodge and pool. 

 The lodge was closed though, end of season.

The pool was warm :-)

This is a trail marker for skiers.

During snow season, skiers can ski from their cabin down to the big lodge for breakfast and catch a lift back up the mountain and ski back to their little cabin. Crazy but cool.

(the concrete pad is in front of the mountain lodge and the ski sign is just out of site to the right of the picture - so you can see how people can ski right out of their cabins and head on down the mountain)

 Some last shots of the place as we were leaving. This is a much better picture of the Warren Miller Lodge, the main lodge where Greg and I ate and he did some of his business.

Over view shots of the area.

The golf course off in the distance to the left.

The main ski run is flanked by homes and comes right to the back of the big lodge.

Main run from a distance.

- Up close -

 a lovely place to stay.

Big Sky

Our accommodations and scenery while staying in Big Sky at the Yellowstone Club.

We had breakfast buffet at Yellowstone Club's Warren Miller Lodge. It's so big (and it being the end of summer season, not many people) we weren't sure what we were supposed to do but it's run just like the breakfast buffet at the Fairfield Inn we stayed at in Bozeman - just serve yourself as much as you want.

Greg spent the day doing business. I spent the day up at the mountain cabin (really called Rainbow Cabins) and would drive back down to the lodge to catch up with Greg for lunch and dinner.

 The front of the lodge.

"Loved" loading this picture and realizing that one side of the collar of my jacket had 

been turned under all through lunch! Lovely.

Drive through Yellowstone

We spent the afternoon and evening driving through Yellowstone Park. Our goal was to see wild life.

I think this bug eaten log looks like some kind of map.

We saw a lot of elk.

If you look closely, you can see the few elk down in the grass.

We made it to the north side of the park and stopped at Mammoth Hot Springs for a treat.

We saw several bison but too far away to get a picture 

until we came across this guy who was eating by the side of the road.

We were still in the park as the sun went down and at sundown we were passing Gibbon Field, there are two bison way out there but it was the sunset that caught our attention.

We made it to our accommodations in Big Sky. It's a little cabin up top a mountain.

Comfy!