Grand Tetons - Wrap Up

5 days and 4 nights camping at Lake Jackson in Grand Teton National Park with the entire Monroe family (minus Greg, who is sequestered in the MTC in Provo learning Spanish).


Happy Campers - the boys thought camping was the coolest thing ever

Grandpa Keith roasting some marshmellows over the coals

Sunset over Lake Jackson


Burying Jeffrey on the rocky beach

Also not pictured because we weren't carrying the cameras around constantly:

The seven mile run up and down Signal Mountain in the early morning.

The hours Jeffrey spent roasting marshmellows for everyone's S'Mores.

The nightly Rook games ending mainly because it was freezing.

The wildlife spottings (moose, elk, pica, deer) because they always ran away too quickly.

The incredible dinners, including several Dutch Oven specialties.

Thanks Monroes for supplying us with all our camping supplies that we couldn't bring (which was pretty much everything but our clothes) and for a great vacation!

Grand Tetons - on the Boat

Jeffrey and Laird ready for boating


Melanie and Dan - happy Newleyweds


Jeffrey driving the boat


Aunt Kimberly


Laird drives the boat


Jeffrey takes it all in

Grand Tetons - the Hike

The Hike On Wednesday, we took the ferry across Lake Jenny to hike up Cascade Canyon.

The participants (Melanie and Charity hung with us for the first third)

The view of the canyon looking back halfway through the hike

Lake Solitude at the far end of the canyon. It is mostly frozen over. We were very surprised by the amount of snow left in early July.


Lunch on the rock (picture taken by a random woman hiker who joined us and avoided being in all pictures)

At this point, some hikers (not me) determined to jump in the small part of Lake Solitude that was not frozen over.


Mike jumps in for a second time.

The original plan was to climb a pass and then hike back out a different canyon. However, given that there was a tremendous amount of snow at 9000 feet and we would have to pass over 10700 feet and we could see the amount of snow on the trail up to the pass, we decided to play it safe and hike back out the way we came. As it was, it was a lot of snow.



Dan and Keith stop to wait for slackers on the way down

After 15 miles of hiking, there was a half hour wait to ride the ferry back to the other side of the lake. I thought priority should be given to people who had hiked the farthest, but no one asked my advice. A very fun and exhausting day hike.

I Love Lucy

Traveling with Lucy is a real adventure. She loves being at home and is another animal when traveling. On the way to the US, we brought her carseat because she had her own seat on the plane (for the first time). However, she refused to sit in the seat, screaming violently whenever she was put in it. I think she saw that other people didn't have to sit in carseats and she got jealous. Luckily, on our second flight (from Tokyo to SLC) there was another baby who was much worse than she was, so she looked pretty good.

Lucy is very shy meeting new people. Whenever she was introduced to someone new (which was pretty much everybody for her), she turned her face away and hugged me tightly. We had to convince people that she is really quite talkative at home.


On the ill-fated mosquito hike, attempting to escape from Aunt Amy


Attempting to flee from Uncle Steve at the mud pots. Points for Steve for persistence.


Attempting to flee from Sheralie (though she was usually fine with Sheralie)

So I wound up carrying her...quite a bit.


Near Old Faithful


At the end of the Mosquito hike


At Grand Prismatic Springs


On the boat on Jackson Lake in the Grand Tetons

She did wind up warming up a little bit:


with Aunt Amy


with Grandpa Broadbent (though I think she is about 5 minutes away from a 2-hour nap in this picture)

Kudos to Sheralie for waking up with her on many nights as she slept in our room at the cabin and then in our tent in the Grand Tetons. My theory is that she likes spending the nights with Sheralie and then the daytime with me. Or perhaps she just likes me during the day because I have bigger forearms to sit on.

On the penultimate plane ride home, she slept in Sheralie's arms, then on the final, 14.5 hour plane ride to Manila, she slept with me (at least for the first 8+ hours). Without the car seat, she had more room to spread out and sleep, but boy she sure does squirm a lot during her sleep.

I wound up only sleeping an hour or two on that flight. We touched down at 3:15 am Manila time and got back to our house at 5:30 am. Just enough time to shower up and grab some breakfast before catching my carpool ride to work at 6:45 am. I was a little slap happy by the end of the day.

But it wouldn't have been the same trip without you Lucy. We love you even if you are high maintenance at this age.


Cold Teton morning

Yellowstone Reunion

First ever Broadbent Family Reunion (for this generation)



We stayed in Idaho Park, ID and visited nearby Yellowstone. For any who have not visited Yellowstone, it is huge. Some pictures:


Grand Prismatic Springs


Mammoth Springs


Fairy Falls


Bison by a mud pot


Lone Star Geyser, which goes off every 3 hours or so. After biking up to it, we missed it by five minutes




The matching T-shirts were a hit.




Rafting down Yellowstone River

Soccer Camp

Jeffrey the soccer star.

Yo Daddy-o

Please excuse us while we are experiencing technical difficulties. The "motherboard" went down on our home computer so I am reduced to my work computer and using our my 8-year old laptop, which takes 20 minutes to boot up.

Rest assured we have lots of great material from our 2-week return to the US: 2 days in Provo, 6 days in Yellowstone, 5 days camping in the Grand Tetons and 2 days in Preston, ID.

PS The title comes from Lucy, who for some reason has taken to calling me "Daddy-o" which is quite endearing.