I applied for a couple of jobs on a whim and actually ended up with one job interview. I won’t know how I did until sometime next week, but it’s been hard to focus on pretty much anything besides that interview (particularly since I went out and bought a whole new outfit — shoes and everything — for it) in the last few days.
I’ve been thinking about the before and after of our trip to Yellowstone. My checklist included:
- Find my ancestor’s baptismal record;
- Visiting Temple Square
- Seeing the Great Salt Lake
- Visiting Golden Spike National Monument
- Seeing a bison
- Seeing a bear
- Walking at least 100 yards from a paved road at Yellowstone
- Leaving the path entirely at Yellowstone
- Seeing Old Faithful erupt (and recording it if possible)
- Visiting the Old Faithful Inn (and eating there if possible)
- Visiting Dinosaur National Monument
- Seeing the petroglyphs at Dinosaur National Monument
- Visiting five different states
And I may have done the first. The record I found was for the correct date and the surname starts with the correct three letters. Unfortunately, as helpful as the people at the Family History Library were, no one there that day spoke Russian.
I did the 7th as a technicality. The park ranger directed us to a path that was fairly well traveled (and thus not terribly likely to end up with us disappearing without a trace or anything) and, as it turned out, 212 yards of it were unpaved. As a result, for 12 yards in the middle of the path, we were technically 100 yards from a paved road. We also made a sharp left into the woods and walked for a total of about a hundred yards, but we had to turn right to get around an obstacle, so we ended up less than 100 yards from the path.
And we got four of our five states in. We never made it to Colorado, since it was really late when we got to our hotel in Vernal and I just didn’t have the energy to drive any longer that night, even if Colorado was only a half hour away. And the next day, we got a later start than I would have liked, so we had to head back to Salt Lake City and didn’t get to go to Colorado that day. But I still got to visit Utah, Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming, so four out of five isn’t bad.
Alex and I leave for Chicago early Monday morning, so I’m going to type up my next National Geographic post tonight or tomorrow and perhaps write up Golden Spike National Monument as well. Those will be my posts for August 8 and 10, and by the 12th we’ll be home.