Summer's Last Hurrah on #MondayBlogs

I know I always say go somewhere you've never been before, but this year I went somewhere I haven't been in a long time - Yellowstone.  The last time I was there was 2005, so it's been ten years. It's changed some. Now, three million people visit Yellowstone a year, so it's getting really crowded with people. So much so that the parking lots couldn't even hold everyone's vehicles and folks are parking along the highways, making trails where they aren't supposed to. As a result, we saw a lot less wildlife than usual.  We did see these lazy elk in Gardiner, Montana.

And finally after much searching, we found the bison on the east side of the park. I was starting to wonder where they all went! I almost asked the activists who were demonstrating against hazing of buffalo that leave the park.

Old Faithful was magnificent as always and the hot pools/springs were impressive, although they seemed to have less water than I remembered from years ago. I hope it's not because of the drought.

I'm afraid people are loving Yellowstone to death. It is worth seeing, but wow, there sure are a lot of us.  No trip is complete without checking out the historic lodges. Here's a pic of the inside of the Old Faithful Lodge where we enjoyed huckleberry ice cream. Pretty cool. *apologies to the random people in the pic- you were in my shot! ;)

I took the opportunity to take a break from writing and editing, which I've been doing all summer it feels like!  I have two manuscripts I'm querying and I third I need to get edited for query, not to mention the two books I'm getting ready to self publish. (If anyone is a Microsoft Word format wizard, please help!)

When I got home, I did a bit of editing on Crawdad, mostly just adding dates to the chapter headings. Reading back over it, I realized how much I loved the story. Oh man, it's good stuff. I really want to share it with you. Cross your fingers I get someone to publish it cause it's some of my best and I don't say that lightly. C'mon publishing gods! Bring me some good news!

Feels like summer is coming to an end. My kids go back to school next week, but I'm not ready to let it go. At least I have my pictures to help hold on to the memories~