Honeymoonin'

While the kids are away, mom and dad will play! Our girls have been visiting their grandparents and cousins in Minnesota for the past two weeks, so Derrick & I have been enjoying time together-alone! It's wonderful to not have to fight for his attention..to not have to share him.

The last weekend in July, we were able to camp with our friends the McGrails in the BigHorn Mountains. (Yes, Mike, it only took 5 years, but we finally made it there!) It was the perfect weekend to be camping at 9000 feet above sea level as temps in Billings were in the 90s! Apparently, Becky needs to take note that you should always pack a sweatshirt when camping...just in case it's cold at night.

We saw more moose in two days than we've seen in our entire lives! We spied 5 moose throughout the weekend, most of them right at our campground.

We did a little hiking with Doug and Sarah to the revitalizing Medicine Wheel (yea, right) and the Porcupine Falls.

On Sunday, we headed down the mountain back down to 3000 feet above sea level and took a dip (as the girls like to say) in Yellowtail Lake. It was beautiful on the south end of the lake, which I've never seen before. Derrick got in some water skiing and the rest of us got to relax and soak up the sun (or shade!)

This past weekend, we headed out to the Crazy Mountains outside of Big Timber. We hiked in about four-miles and set up camp for two-nights near Granite Lake. We initially set up on a little island between Blue and Granite Lakes until other campers said they had spotted five wolverines near our campsite. I asked Derrick if we could find another site...yikes!

Crazy Peak

On our hike up we watched thousands of butterflies flutter around lots of wildflowers.

And as we climbed, amazed at how much snow is still up on the mountains and actually hiked on some sections of snow! Derrick was nice, he didn't throw any snowballs at me & he even let me use his sweatshirt..because again, I didn't pack one.

Big Timber Creek

The weather was excellent all weekend! We tried our hand at fishing a number of times without any luck but were both successful in finishing 400-page novels throughout the weekend.

On Saturday, we hiked around Blue and Thunder Lakes and went boulder climbing up along a waterfall, which afforded us some spectacular views! (Yes, that is one of many large snow banks still up on the lake!)

On our hike out Sunday, we both agreed that although we don't enjoy the girls complaining about hiking, we sure missed having them along with us to enjoy the sites, smells and sounds of camping! We are both ready for them to come home!

We'll wrap up with a shot of Aliya and Derrick tubing on Yellowtail Lake before she left for Minnesota...