How can it be August already?

Hey everyone. It's been such a busy summer already and I don't feel like I have done much of anything.

Well, to get you all caught up, here's a synopsis for the month of July.

I got a random email a few months ago from my third cousin Thord and his wife Kerstin. Thord and my dad used to be pen pals in th '60's and visited Spokane back in the '70's (I was about 3 at the time). So 31 years later they were visiting Seattle and Portland on a singing tour and called my parents in Spokane to arrange a visit. My folks gave them my sister & my emails so I said hey, as long as you are going to Spokane why don't you just continue down I-90 a few hundred miles down the road and visit Yellowstone? As always, my persuasive skills won out. They had a short but eventful visit - even though the first day and a half we had no major animal sightings (I had trouble convincing Thord and Kerstin that there actually are a ton of bison, elk, deer, bears, etc. in the park) They were all hanging out on the northern range, though, so we saw plenty on day three. The bears were along the Mammoth to Tower corridor - we saw half a dozen black and grizzly bears so we were redeemed in the end. On the last day we drove up to the top of the Beartooths.

We ended up having a bbq at Jessi's place - a thoroughly international crowd of the Swedes, our Italian interns, our Chinese volunteers, and an Austrian just to round things out.

I think Thord & Kerstin enjoyed themselves all around.