Vacation

Wow, summer is flying by! So much has happened since I last blogged I'm not sure where to start. I ran a half marathon, the Yellowstone Half on June 14. I planned on running it for fun, hoping to come in under 2 hours. I knew that we would have to run on a trail for part of it but I still thought I could keep a good pace. We started on a gravel road that was not flat and by mile 2 my knee was hurting, just a constant ache so I knew if I kept it easy I would be fine. Then we hit the 2 track road and the pain moved up my IT band into my hip. I slowed a little but kept running, we stayed on the 2 track for most of the miles with about 3 miles of more techinical trail. It was a beautiful run and I just tried to enjoy it, not worrying about time. The last 2 miles were hard and I just wanted to walk but I didn't. When I came around the corner for the finish J.R. said I was leaning to one side, I didn't believe him until I saw all the pictures and I was leaning a lot! Guess it's a good thing I didn't push the pace! My knee/hip took a few days to feel better but it didn't cause any major injuries. My sister also ran the half with a group of friends. I think we all thought the course was harder then we thought it would be, however if we had trained on trails it would have been fine. It is always fun running in new places, and we didn't see any grizzly bears while running (they did have bear spray at all water stops)!

After the half it was time to start our vacation! We stayed in West Yellostone for a week, visiting Yellowstone throughout. It was a fantastic trip, we ended up seeing 7 grizzly bears, 4 wolves, osprey, bison, elk, and a lot of other animals. I had never seen a grizzly in the wild before and it was as cool as you think it would be. We also visited the bear and wolf refuge in West Yellowstone. Here are our "wolves" in their den, walking down the 300 steps to look at the falls in Grand Canyon, at the bottom.