Our Lady of the Pines Church

This is the Catholic Church we attend here in West Yellowstone. Having a church in this small town was a dream of a resident. She made this dream a reality and the building was completed in 1950. As you can see, it's a real A-frame building, inside and out.
This area is surrounded by forests. To coincide with the 50 year celebration, the windows were changed in 1998. The stained glass windows were designed to reflect the environment, depict the changing colors of the sky, snow and foliage and reflect the beauty of yearly weather patterns in these mountain woodlands. The liturgical colors of green, white, red and shades of purple and gold were integrated into the design giving definition to this space as a place of worship. The windows were designed locally. The glass used are a complex of glasses: some mouth blown, some hand rolled, and others machine made, some from Germany, some from France, and others from the U.S. (Some of this information is from a brochure we picked up at the church.)
The building is beautiful, but it's the people that make a church. Sister Pat is the Pastoral Administrator and lives here in town. She is the first smiling face we see as she cheerfully greets us all when we enter. Father Joe, the priest who presides over weekend masses, commutes from Bozeman, 90 miles each way, each weekend. He has been retired since 1991, and does this as a volunteer. We are very fortunate to have him. He does a wonderful job of creating community out of a mixture of a few yearly residents, summer residents (like us), and visitors who are here for only one weekend. We are usually an international group.


Hospitality time after Sunday Mass is a time to talk to the visitors and have homemade cookies with coffee or lemonade.

The rustic, yet beautiful interior and pews.

Spring

Summer

Autumn

Winter

Exploring Grassy Lake Road

A couple of weekends ago we ventured into Yellowstone again, now that the major crowds are gone. We entered the park through the west entrance and out the south entrance. Between Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks, at the turn for Flagg Ranch, we headed west on Grassy Lake Rd. It took us to route 20 in Ashton, Idaho on mostly (33 miles) dirt road. Exploring the back roads is something we both enjoy and find very relaxing. Of course our truck gets very dirty, inside and out.

A bison in Yellowstone, fattening up for winter.

View from a primitive campsite on the John D. Rockefeller, Jr Memorial Parkway which is the eastern part of Grassy Lake Road. Each site had a bear proof trash receptacle, bear proof food box, modern out house, picnic table, metal fire ring and all the quiet you could want. There is no fee and a 14 day limit. The sites are small, mostly for tents, and truck campers. They ranged from 1 campsite to 4 campsites per area.

A Steller's Jay was the only resident we saw at this camp site.

Some fall berries.

Further along we came to Grassy Lake Reservoir where we saw this large black bear. We were behind some trees, so he never saw us. It was amazing watching him searching for delicious morsels in the moist soil on the shore.

Grassy Lake Reservoir is very large and in the middle of nowhere. Not sure what area this water supplies.

One of the many creeks along our route.

A nice meadow towards the western end of our trek on the dirt road. We encountered only a handful of vehicles and most were dirt motorcycles.

Indian Lake, which is mostly covered in lilly pads. Looks like a great habitat for moose, but we didn't spot any.

On our way home, after a day of exploring and some shopping, we were fortunate to see the rising of the full moon.