Wednesday night the Rec Department led a moonlight hike up to the top of Elephant back trail which looks over Yellowstone Lake from 8,600 feet. The sun was setting as we went up and it was dark for the hike down which made for an interesting decent. 

 Saturday we got up early to start hiking. We did 12 miles among three different trails. On of the trails ended in rocky cliffs over Yellowstone Lake. 

Monday

Jeff, AJ, Caroline and I headed out for Mammoth early in the morning and met up with a group of Christian Ministries people including one of the support staff people who works for the National Forest Service. He took us on an off trail hike along the edge of a long ridge. Most of the hike was feet from a 300 to 400 foot vertical drop. We saw lots of wildlife; a tiny fawn, a golden eagle, a falcon fighting a hawk, big horn sheep, elk and a few bears on the way home.

Also on the way back from Mammoth we stopped at five different waterfalls that were close to the road. Undine falls, Upper and Lower falls, Crystal falls, and Tower falls which is the waterfall in the picture.

Sunday

After our morning services on Sunday we headed out to do a 6 to 7 mile hike in the Hayden valley with a group of people that we know from Grant Village. We saw many bison and a badger. 

After the hike we went to do our evening service but the only person to show up was the head of Christian Ministries and he told us he had just seen grizzly's on the way in and had us go see them. It was our first bear jam and there were tons of people and no good picture opportunities. We headed back to Grant and right before grant we met up with a big Grizzly walking down the side of the road. Apparently the Grizzly's are following the Elk into Grant Village so we will be seeing more of them. 

Saturday - Jeff worked Breakfast on Saturday morning so we didn't have any plans but around lunch time we decided to make another visit to the Grand Tetons and the to Jackson. We went with a neighbor who knew about a sports bar in Jackson where we could watch the Red Wings game. In the Tetons we did the first few miles of a trail and then found our way off trail to a waterfall the we could hear from the path. The high points looked down onto Phelps lake below. 

Sunday - In between our morning services and our afternoon service we decided to drive to Canyon, one of the places we hadn't yet seen. We saw lower falls which was a busy lookout close to the parking lot. We then took a trail from there and as soon as our feet left the pavement and met the dirt and snow of the trail, the tourists disappeared. We hiked along the south rim of the canyon with a steep thousand foot drop always at our side. We then headed back to our 7:00 service but it started to thunderstorm. On our way back to Grant Village we saw an incredibly bright and full rainbow over the lake.