Bison!

My favorite thing about Yellowstone National Park is by far the wonderful bison. They are very cool, and really just look like mythical animals. They roam all over the park, and even into Gardiner, the town at the north entrance.

This is the bison hanging around the town cafe in Gardiner. They are free to roam outside of the park in the winter and early spring.

Both males and females have horns on their heads, and the males can weigh upwards of 1000 pounds. They are literally everywhere in the park, and often will walk in the middle of the roads.

In late August and early September, the bison have the yearly "rut", where all the colonies get together, mate, and raise their young together.

When bison are born, they are a light brown, and they darken over time.

Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure

Endurance: An Epic of Polar Adventure by Frank Arthur Worsley

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have read almost every book written on the Endurance expedition, and quite a number of books about polar exploration.
This is my favorite one.

View all my reviews

Cake Dumplings!

Inspired by reading about cake pops on thecraftypenguin blog (see the link in my previous post) I decided to try and make my own, but put my own twist on it. Which, I admit, came from the fact that I didn't have any popsicle sticks to put them on. So, with that change, I decided to make "cake dumplings"

Most of the steps of cake dumplings are the same as a cake pop. First, you bake a cake and then when its cool crumble it into little bits. Then, you put about half a can of icing in, and stir it around to make the mixture stick together.

I used food coloring to make the cake and the icing pink (since I was going to use chocolate raspberry for the toppings)

Then you take a small handful of the mixture, for it into a little ball, and place it on a cookie sheet.

After that I made a double-boiler and melted half a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips, and added chocolate raspberry sauce from the pampered chef that one of my roommates ordered before she suddenly quit and left. (al the pampered chef stuff was delivered like a week after she ended up leaving, and we've had a really fun time eating up all the leftover goodies!) Once the chocolate is melted, its time to cover the cake dumplings!

As the picture demonstrates, I just dropped them in the melted chocolate and kind of mixed them around to get them covered in chocolate. After that, you put them on a plate, and let the chocolate cool.

Yum!!!

The Crafty Penguin: The Basic Cake Pop (Plus Other Tips)

The Crafty Penguin: The Basic Cake Pop (Plus Other Tips): "Cake pops, a Bakerella creation, are a lot of fun to make because they can take on so many personalities. When I made Penguin Pops in Aug..."

This is my new favorite baking website. And I really want to try and make cake-pops sometime soon!!

But for now, I am very happy to say I am doing about a baking project a day for the guests on our ranch. Yesterday was cheesecake, today was flourless chocolate cake, and tomorrow will be key lime pie.

Hopefully some smores cupcakes and cake pops in the future!!!

Anemone Geyser

This is a video of my favorite geyser, Anemone Geyser, erupting. It is is the upper geyser basin, about a 10 minute walk from Old Faithful. It goes through a complete eruption cycle about every 10 minutes or so. Because it is so small, the eruptions are very small, but are still entertaining. It also is neat because its actually 2 geysers that are connected, and one will typically fill and erupt after the other one is done draining.

Glacier National Park

For 4th of July weekend, we went to Glacier National Park. It is an incredibly beautiful place, and I got to go on my first backcountry camping trip since I was 13. We went on a 4 mile hike to Avalanche Lake, which is a beautiful lake created by an avalanche, and has all these pretty waterfalls on the trail up to it, and falling into the lake from above.

A really pretty waterfall from the river flowing from Avalanche lake that you see on the trail

Avalanche lake and the waterfalls! We walked into the lake and it was very cold...well, my friends thought it was cold (but nothing compared to antarctica). The water is really pure because it comes from glaciers

After our hike to and from the lake, we started on our backcountry trip. We hiked 5 miles into our campsite that was on Lake McDonald. Our site was right on the lake and it was gorgeous!

The view in the morning from our camping site.

The next day we hiked the 5 miles out...which went quicker then the five miles in, but we were much more tired at the end.

At the end of the trail. We made it!!

Here are some more random pictures of our trip...

Heading into the wild!

Getting ready to leave the campsite

Hanging out at Lake McDonald

Grand Teton National Park

A few weeks ago, a few of us decided to drive down to Grand Tetons National Park. This is only 8 miles south of Yellowstone, so to get there we had to drive through all of Yellowstone which was pretty cool, because we got to see everything. And after the long drive, we were rewarded with some of the most beautiful mountains you could ever see.

Most of the Tetons are all around Jackson Lake, which you can take boats out on. Once it starts getting really nice out, we will definitely be going back.

So very pretty!!!