FOURTH OF JULY WEEKEND

Fourth of July weekend was a blast! Ry and i went up to Island Park really late Thursday night to meet my grandparents at their trailer. On the way there we say a HUGE deer, a dead moose, and a herd of elk, when we got there we went to bed almost immediately. The next morning Ry and I went on a long bike ride down to Big Springs, ate a yummy breakfast with grandma and grandpa, and then packed a lunch for our three hour river raft trip. We only got stuck twice where the river was shallow---Ry was really good at jumping out to get us unstuck:-) There was a moose drinking out of the river about half way through our trip, it was so gorgeous, Ry is contemplating changing our honeymoon destination to Island Park rather than Mazatlan. We got back from our river trip and got ready to go to West Yellowstone for the parade and fireworks, but first Ry and i went to Pond's Lodge for a little bite to eat. The parade in West Yellowstone was a very small town parade, there weren't any real floats either, but it was still fun. We got ice-cream afterwards and headed over to Yellowstone, we saw tons of wildlife and were very lucky to see four of the geysers going off at once! (Old Faithful, Beehive geyser, and two others we couldn't find the name on the map). On our way back we stopped at the old airfield and watched some fireworks, we were all very sleepy when we got back, but of course, grandma fixed us up a little yummy snack before another long night on the cot.
The next day was the Miller family reunion over in Driggs, Ry woke me up early and we went on one more bike ride before we headed to Driggs, ate breakfast, and loaded up to head out. Ry and i left before grandma and grandpa so we could make a few scenic stops on the way. We stopped at my Dad's side of the family's graves over in Ashton, we stopped after the bridge and looked over the river gorge and decided someday we are going to have a cabin somewhere exactly like that, once we got into Driggs we still had an hour before the reunion started. So, we drove up to Targhee and made a few stops on the way, then we walked around the resort wishing we had more time to bike around up there. The weather was perfect, the wildflowers were in full bloom, and it was so fun to see my family. After we had eaten and made the rounds with all the uncles we went down to the river and the float adventure begins. Ry and I canoed with Abigail and Ween, Marcus and Kaid took Thomas and Cameron (so they obviously had the lightest load), and then Heidi and Adam had Zooey with them...

Pulling the canoe out...

We had a great canoe trip, we stayed dry the entire time, and then Marky and Kaid decided to swamp Ween, Abby, Ry and me. Ry lost his shoe, I threw my oar on accident trying to get away from them, and we almost lost Abby down river:-) We used 2 cans of bug spray to ward of the masses of mosquitoes---i have never seen so many!

Ry and Kaid coming out with the items that they salvaged before the river could.

Marcus playing with the dry ice at the family reunion at Great Grandpa's house... later followed by teaching all the little ones how to make a dry ice bomb--- does that surprise anyone??

So Ry, Ween and I got home from the family reunion first because Dad had the trailer with the canoes... Mareesa took a load of stuff up to the door and came running back from the door saying "i think there's a skunk up there". Of course Ry and i didn't believe her at first, so she took my camera up and started trying to zoom and take pictures from the grass (this isn't one of them). Anyway, she finally got one where we believed her... We waited for my parents to get home praying that we weren't going to get sprayed and praying the curious kitty, who was staring down at the skunk, wouldn't get sprayed either. We ended up packing everything through the basement doors and waking up to mom's flowers all dug up and our pepper plants eaten.