Categories
Family Travel

Yellowstone 2018

Reunion time! We explored a new (to us) part of Yellowstone National Park this time: Yellowstone Lake. We stayed in cabins near the Lake Lodge. It was 4th of July weekend, but we didn’t notice the crowds until we stopped at Old Faithful on the way out.

An amazing hike in the area is Storm Point Trail. I felt like I was in Ireland with grassy hills and steep cliffs along the water. And we saw a yellow-bellied marmot yawning on a rock.

Over the years I’ve seen a few bears in the distance, but never up close. This time we had front-row seats to a female grizzly foraging and crossing the road in front of us.

Here’s the video slide show –

And more photos –

Categories
Family Travel

Johannesburg and Pretoria

 

I fell a little behind in documenting the safari from October. We spent a couple of days in Johannesburg and a day in Pretoria. The different branches of government in South Africa are located in separate cities, so Pretoria is the administrative (executive branch) capital, Cape Town is the legislative capital, Bloemfontein is the judicial capital, and Johannesburg is the largest city. It was interesting to spend a day in Johannesburg and get one perspective on the country followed by a day in Pretoria to get a very different perspective.

You can watch the video slideshow version or browse through way too many photos or just go about your life without doing either.

Long drive from MalaMala (near Kruger National Park) to Johannesburg, via the loosely-defined Panorama Route (God’s Window, Bourke’s Luck, Graskop, etc.)

Giant spider in our AirBNB –

Menacing rain spider in our AirBNB

Bike tour of Soweto with Lebo’s

Apartheid Museum, Constitution Hill, the Zoo, LDS Temple, etc.

Pretoria, including Voortrekker Monument, Kruger House, Church Square, City Hall, Union Buildings, Cullinan Diamond Mine area, and a delicious braai (barbecue) with our hosts

And a few straggler photos just to make this page take forever to load –