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2014, April: Cattle Branding and Yellowstone, a Weekend of Awesome

I just had the most amazing weekend. It's not going to be easy to beat this one!
On Saturday, our neighbors Lacy and Ryan (and previous owners of our house) invited us to a cattle branding at Lacy's parents' ranch in Mackay, Idaho. We arrived at lunchtime, just in time for a massive feast (that we hadn't earned!). Then, we joined the group of real-life cowboys and cowgirls to help with the branding. The surroundings were pretty spectacular, too.

The crew had spent the morning vaccinating the heifers and separating all the calves. The afternoon began by weeding out the few calves that were too young for the branding experience. Then they went to work! First, a calf was roped in the pen and dragged out by its back legs. Some fought this process, others seemed resigned to their fate and lay relatively still as they slid backwards through the dust.
As soon as the rider and calf came out, someone caught the head in a specially-designed tool that was attached to an inner tube (so it had some give) and anchored to the ground.
Once the calf was held in place, several people rushed in! One branded the calf on its rear, one notched the ears, one injected a growth hormone under the skin of the ear (this looked like the toughest job to me), one injected two vaccines into the neck, one injected another vaccine into each nostril (this was Christian's job), and another documented the animal's tag number, color, and sex.

After all that (which happened very quickly), the calf was released into the pasture to graze. Up to four calves could move through the process at once and the crew completed all 300 animals in around four hours. I thought that I would be bothered by this treatment of the calves, but I was surprised (and relieved) to find that I wasn't. It all happened so fast and the calves appeared to recover immediately from the ordeal. Some of them even ran straight back into the pen only to be roped again and removed.

Once all of the calves were done, the noisy heifers were finally release to find their young, and the cowboys rode off into the sunset (okay, they really put their horses into trailers and drove away, but it's almost the same).
We were sunburned, dusty, and exhausted, but it was awesome.

On Sunday, we went to Yellowstone! It was opening weekend for the park and I was determined that we would visit as soon as it opened. It was very cool to see the park right after they plowed the roads. The weather was beautiful and there were hardly any people.
We visited the Lower and Upper Falls at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone.
Then wandered around some of Norris Basin (most of the boardwalks were blocked by 2+ feet of snow, but we made it partway around!).
And finished up the day with Old Faithful. Of course.
We were home by 7pm and back at work the next morning. I can't believe Yellowstone is now a day trip for me. This was my third visit in fourteen years, and I hope I never take it for granted. All the photos from cattle branding are on Flickr, as are all the Yellowstone pics.
Top left: West Yellowstone entrance - leaving Yellowstone after a summer working at Old Faithful in 2000
Top right: South entrance - visiting Yellowstone for our belated honeymoon in 2010
Bottom left: West Yellowstone entrance - attempting to visit Yellowstone on the last day of the season in 2013. We were unable to enter the park due to drifting snow.
Bottom right: West Yellowstone entrance - visiting the park during opening weekend, 2014.

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