hiking and new job

Michael and Jess.

Monday 06/25/12

The burn in 1988's remains and the new growth

My favorite view!

We have had a great week. We started working by ourselves (eek) on the phones. I’ve only messed up a couple of times and Mike says it came right back to him. I’m still learning the map, but everything is going great. We have had some funny calls. Mine was an older man who called and changed some of his reservations…no big deal. It was the last question that made me chuckle. His wife was clearly in the background telling everything to say…I’m not sure why she didn’t just get on the phone herself…anyway, she mumbled something that I couldn’t discern until he asked me, “do you have a beauty salon or nail places there at the Old Faithful Inn?” Really?....not to be mean…..but you’re coming to Yellowstone. No one cares about your nails, I promise. Of course, it made me chuckle even more when he told me their home town….take a guess….yup, Houston TX. Good ol’ Texas women. Mike has a better story. It was about 5:30pm and this lady called and told me that she spoke with someone in the morning and they told her that if she called back after 9:00pm that she could have the room of her choice for a discounted rate. The funny thing is that our office closes at 6:00pm and there is no way possible for us to give anyone rate discounts. I kindly explained this to her and she gets incredibly flustered and starts stammering and says rather declaratively that that is a stupid policy and the she is going to “CALL MY SENATOR!!!!!!!” I asked her to hold for a minute and called for a supervisor to try to explain this company policy. Needless to say she didn’t get her discount and I sincerely hope she called her senator. This is what we deal with on an hourly basis. For all the silly calls there are 10 really kind people who are eagerly seeking a room for themselves or their families and we are extremely glad to help them.  Wednesday the 20^th we decided to hike trout lake. It was only about a 2.5 mile hike but we were stopped unexpectedly by a bison that decided to hang out in the middle of our trail. You better believe we’re counting that hike to our 100 mile goal, even though we only hiked about 1.75 miles, Shoooooo (in Mater’s voice from cars). Because our little hike was cut short, we decided to drive home and Guess what we saw???? Yup, a bear, actually we saw 4 bears that day. One on our drive up to the hike and 3 on our drive home (all were black bears, we’ve yet to see a grizzly). Unfortunately, I forgot our stinking memory card and so I told Kerby (who was in the car with us) to take a million pictures and tag me in them on facebook. The most exciting bear we saw looked young maybe a year or two old and he was literally walking on the side of the road. He was about 6 ft away from us (we were in our car). Just so you know, if you have never seen a bear, they are as cute as you can imagine they would be….cute, until they rip your face off, says Mike. Regardless, they are cute. We also, got caught in a bison herd movement. Again, I was kicking myself because I didn’t have my camera. There were literally 100 bison all around our car. They were crossing the road to get to the greener grass on the other side. There were HUGE bison and baby red dogs (baby bison). The young males were playing and butting heads. It was pretty cool because we could hear their heads slamming against each other. Cool, until you’re the one their butting, says mike. He is pretty cautious, which I’m grateful for. We decided we were actually more scared of the bison crossing than the bear that was 6 ft away from our car. Granted bison are the deadliest animals in the park…but still. We also saw a fox with a whistle pig in its mouth, and a bunch of prong horn. If you ever decide to come to Yellowstone (and you should) go to Lamar Valley around 9:00, you’ll see a TON on wild animals. Today we decided to go on a couple of hikes. The first hike was called Tower Fall. Imagine it, we’re gearing up to go on this 3.5 mile hike around some falls…hence the name. I have my pack on camera (WITH MEMORY CARD) in my pack; Mike has his pack on, bear spray and all. There are tourist everywhere as we start to do the hike the tourist are staring at us (they were wearing flip flops and other non-hiking clothes). I in turn was looking at them thinking they were either crazy or super hard core. 

 

Turns out everyone hikes about ¼ of a mile to see the falls and then turns around and goes back to their car. After we hiked the strenuous...not so much…1/4 mile to the falls we turn to start the hike down and around the falls when we see, it’s been blocked off for construction. It was pretty funny. You bet your britches we’re counting those 3.5 miles onto our 100 mile goal too! We walked back to our car and decided to move on to the next hike called, Yellowstone River/ Canon rim. This one was not blocked off and so up a very and I mean VERY steep hill we climbed to start off our hike.

 

 This hike had the most amazing views of the canyon and the area. At one point we were walking along and I looked up and saw two mule deer. I stopped and said, “OH!” Mike, Mr. Protector, grabs his bear spray and holds his breath not knowing why I stopped but then breaths again when he saw it was dear. They were just crossing our path and were about 10 feet maybe away from us. They were beautiful with their big floppy ears and their graceful gallop. Mike got my camera out of my bag, but wasn’t able to get them in focus before the disappeared. 

 

The view, like I said was one of my favorites. The hike back led us to a road and we had to walk to our car from there, not my favorite thing to do. In the future, we’ll just get to the peak and turn around and head the way we came….much prettier than a stinking road. 

baby pronghorn SO cute

View of Calcite Springs thermal feature. If you click on the picture and zoom in, you can see the water smoking on the right side of the river.

Big boulder!!

Bigger boulder???...maybe under ground.

Let us know what you think.....Mike says to comment or he'll punch you in the face....not true. 
Love y’all,

Jess and Mike

Mammoth Life: Part Uno

Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, United States of America.

June 9, 2012

Jess and I took a scenic tour around the Grand Loop Road of Yellowstone. It was an exclusive super secret guided tour of the park only available to very important peoples. It was led by me. We went to Old Faithful and checked out the Old Faithful Inn, it was gorgeous as usual. We watched Old Faithful go off, got snowed on and made a fun video. We drove over the Continental Divide…twice! We played in a snow bank on the Continental Divide which has to be some kind of record or something. We drove by Yellowstone Lake and it’s absurdly massively huge and really cold. When we got to a lovely valley called Hayden Valley we saw a ton of momma Bison Bison with baby Bison Bison (that’s actually they’re scientific name, pretty sweet huh?). We drove to the Yellowstone Lake hotel to eat the delicious EDR food (that’s Employee Dining Room, it’s delightful…..). Once we finished dinner which included some tasty sweet potatoes we continued north to the Canyon location. I planned on us taking the drive back to Norris Geyser Basin then north to Mammoth…apparently I get really confused while driving in the park. We ended up going straight north toward Roosevelt and Tower falls over the Dunraven Pass. When we were heading down the pass toward Roosevelt we hit a slight traffic jam. There was a sweet little Black Bear with two cubs just off the side of the road. There were plenty of tasty tourists to choose from so we weren’t in any danger of having our faces eaten off. We drove back to Mammoth without any issue and went straight to bed. Touring the park takes a lot out of you. Good thing we get to do it all again tomorrow but this time it’s for work research.

June 10-15, 2012

We’re going to compress some time for you lovely readers out there. It can get pretty boring typing up a travel log and I cant imagine how much fun it is to read. I just wish you could all be up here enjoying the things we are, it’s pretty amazing. We worked Monday through Friday 8:00am to about 16:00ish everyday so that’s a large chunk of our time taken up right there. We decided a while ago that in our free time we would join the 100 mile hiking club in Yellowstone. While I was here in 2008 I was able to hike 103.1 miles and would like to pass 200 this summer. Jess is shooting for anything beyond 100 miles. It seems like a pretty daunting task. Especially when you get winded climbing the stairs to your dorm room…we realized early on that we were in for some serious acclimatization. With this in mind we’ve been taking it pretty easy and playing volleyball in our employee rec center. We hadn’t done any hikes until Monday when we got the crazy idea to go hike five miles after work. We picked a trail that I had done before and that one of our hiking companions had done before as well, it wasn’t as easy as I remember it being, at all, not even close. I’m not going to speak for Jess on this but I struggled mightily and was breathing pretty hard for almost the entire hike. It didn’t help that it was mostly uphill and someone was hiding the oxygen from me. We eventually finished and passed out pretty hard that night. The next few days were filled with some impressive waddling and groans from me and a few complaints of soreness from Jess. Friday was the annual Gardiner Rodeo, it’s a big deal up here in this awesome little town of 800 people. We went and enjoy some bareback riding, saddle bronc, team roping, calf roping, barrel racing, tear away roping (or something like that) and everyone’s favorite bull riding. It was a great night until there was a tragic accident where, as we later found out, that a horse during the saddle bronc competition ran head on into a gate and killed itself. It was one of the most disturbing things I have ever seen in my life. The entire arena was in shock. The cowboys jumped on the horse trying to keep it from moving and further hurting itself but their efforts were to no use. The Vet they had on site tried to save the horse as best he could but it was too late. From that point on the rodeo had a dark cloud hanging over it and none of the competitors looked like they wanted to be there but they pushed on and did as best as they could. Once the rodeo was over Jess and I went to the Gardiner community dance at the 2 Bit Saloon. We were so out of place it was ridiculous. Seeing as how we don’t drink or smoke the only thing for us to do was dance. I’m not blessed in that realm nearly as much as my beautiful wife is. We (I) did my best and we had a lot of fun bumping into the drunk people on the tiny, overly crowded dance floor. It was a great week overall. We had an awesome time getting to know our surroundings and the people in this quiet little mountain town. It’s a great place to spend a summer.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Since we were 90% used to the altitude we decided to go on a longer hike than we had earlier in the week (I had also sufficiently recovered from my wounds and overwhelming soreness). We picked a loop trail that goes around a mountain and down the old stagecoach road that they used when the park was in it’s infancy and the Yellowstone Grand Tour was the thing to do. We invited one of our co-workers to come with us, her name is Patsy. Unfortunately her husband, who is also working here for the summer, has been stuck with washing dishes and doesn’t have many days off and his days off don’t coincide with his wife’s days off. So, seeing as how she was bored she tagged along with us. The trail guide that I have said it was 6.2 miles and mostly flat, sounds awesome right? It was. The first two and a half miles were through open meadow sage brush country that Grizzly bear and Elk frequent. Once we hit the second leg it was a little over a mile down the old stagecoach road through tall Douglas Fir and Lodgepole pine forest. It was awesome. As we entered the forest you could feel the temperature drop and the change in scenery was welcomed. We stopped at a trail junction and took a brief break before we hit the uphill/last leg of the hike. It turns out that was a great idea. The last two and a half miles was pretty tough. We climbed up close to 1,000 feet in altitude while skirting along the cliff edge until we reached the overlook that really was the pay off on a hike with so many highlights. The wind had picked up since we started and was blowing extremely hard on the top of Terrace Mountain where we were standing overlooking Rustic Falls and Swan Lake Flats. On the way down we saw lots of signs of bear activity (meaning tons of poop and claw marks in trees). Fortunately we didn’t see any bears up close and personal. When we got back to the car I checked the awesome GPS that my Dad gave me last year for my birthday and it said that we had hiked a total of 7.01 miles and done it in a time of two and a half hours not counting the breaks we took. Our little rag tag party that consisted of myself, Jess and Patsy our hiking buddy who is my parents age had just hiked 7 miles. Words cant describe how awesome that felt and how hungry we all were. It’s been an amazing trip so far and it’s only been a week and a half. I’m excited to see what we’ll accomplish in the remaining time we have here in this beautiful country. So far in a week and a half we’ve hiked 14 miles. We’re well on our way to 100.

Make sure you stay down wind of those bears.

Michael and Jess.

A bear, a baby and a mom

Warning there will be some anthropomorphism (learned that term in my social psych class) on this post. 

I was not feeling well today and decided to sit in bed all day in hopes of feeling better tomorrow for our first day of work. While lying in bed watching Netflix buffer, I heard the most horrible screeching sound. I thought at first it was just annoying sounds from some tourists but the sounds persisted and got louder. I jumped out of my bed and saw, out my window, three elk, two male and one female, galloping toward a bush. I heard some people talking on the street saying they saw a bear in the area. My jaw dropped… a bear?...this close? I watched as the female elk ran around and around the bush looking in it and then looking around and the bush and then looking at the males. It was as if she was wondering what they could do. In response, they turned in opposite directions and galloped away. She continued to circle the bush looking around, for what, I’m not sure. The baby continued to screech and so did the mother elk. She was helpless. No one or thing was going to help her child. Two park rangers showed up a few minutes later and confirmed what the tourists said about the bear. My heart went out for that poor elk. She walked back and forth across the terrain searching to something…perhaps help. Her ears perked constantly she walked back and forth unable to find any help. As I was watching this happen, (and admittedly crying…and still am) my heart went out to this poor helpless mother elk and then it turned to the mothers who have lost a child. It went out to helpless mothers who have a sick or dying child and the agony they must feel. How they must constantly search for help for their child. Never wanting to leave their child, for fear they may lose them when they are away, but also walking away searching for help and not knowing which way to turn and so they do circles…whether figuratively or literally, they do circles searching. I saw her as the night came wonder off to where I could no longer see her and then appear again standing right by the bush. My thoughts went to God and wondering why killing has to be part of nature but knowing He knows why and perhaps I’ll learn one day. So, to all of you mothers who have lost a child, my heart goes out to you and I hope you know that God has a plan, to which we may never understand in this life, but there IS a plan.

Day One and Two in Yellowstone

Some Elk in Gardner, MT

 First and Second day in Yellowstone

Our first day here in Yellowstone, was unexpected. When we first got here we both expected to be living in the Aspen Dorms, which are the married or couple dorms…and seeing as how we’re married…why wouldn’t we? We were told by Ken our Personnel Supervisor, that we’d be living in the Juniper Dorms…21 and up dorms. That’s where Mike lived last time he worked in Yellowstone. Also, they wouldn’t have a shared bed for us. We’d have to push two twin beds together. As soon as he told us that, I laughed and he looked at me strangely. I explained that the mental image of I Love Lucy came to mind. (I used to LOVE that show. Vitameatavegamin was my favorite episode. I actually just watched a movie on Netflix about the real Lucy and Desi called Lucy that was pretty interesting. I digress….) 

After we got to our room and started unpacking, we discovered something TRAGIC, our Amazing pillows Nathan got for us from Sleep Number were missing. After thinking about where they could be, we figured out we left them at the stinkin hotel at Sheridan, WY. Don’t worry, we called and are having them shipped to us….at our expense. =( We pulled our sheets out to start making our bed…beds and they didn’t fit. Our twin beds became a king size bed, which would be great if we had brought king size sheets. Alas, we brought queen size sheets (isn’t that always the way?)

 If you’ve never been to Mammoth, let me explain the size of the nearest town, Gardiner….the population is about 800, so we drove to Livingston (about an hour away) to this knock-off Wal-Mart named Pamida. They did have sheets for five dollars. We bought some sheets that we thought may have worked. The sheets fit but imagine those amazingly flattering and oh so comfortable hospital gowns…that in sheet form. When I lay down, I was scratched, literally! So, Mike texted Patti (his mom) and she’s going to send us some non-hospital gown, scratch resistant sheets. HOORAY! We are now using a sleeping bag to avoid looking like Edward Scissor Hands. It’s been pretty funny, you see because the beds are pushed together and Mike insisted (and I’ll admit I didn’t resist too much) to have my mattress sitting the way it should and his on the ridge of the two beds…so each night he has to make sure he doesn’t slide/roll down and off the bed onto the commercial... and I’m sure completely clean carpeting. This morning he told me about sliding down the bed to get something off the night stand and assured me it was a blast…I tried it…it wasn’t.

 We went to orientation the next morning and met some super nice ladies. There is the two…seasoned ladies; Rose (we met her on the first day) she just had major back surgery and went white water rafting the day before we checked in and Patsy who is feisty and gives all the sarcasm Mike throws at her, right back in his face and two girls around 22; Kirby, who’s super funny and outgoing and Allison, who’s sweet to everyone she meets.

The bison in front of our dorm was as big as our car!

 When we left to go to walk around after orientation, there was a bison sitting right in front of our dorm. It was amazing! We were just walking and I saw something ahead of us and thought, “man, that sure is a huge rock in that grass.” (the bison’s back was toward us). Mike stopped and said, “uh, that’s a bison…let’s turn around and go another way. (Apparently, they are the deadliest animals here in Yellowstone…be assured we stayed clear of it.) 

The Wagons and horses that I learned are called Belgian Draft horses

Our view at Pleasant Valley

That night we were invited to go on the chuck wagon dinner. Basically, we rode in wagons down to Pleasant Valley to eat AMAZING steaks and all kinds of helpings. We saw bison, heard wrangler stories and had a fun time, despite the cold. We heard stories about Truman Everts…that got into all kinds of “shenanigans” in Yellowstone. 

Click on the Pictures to make them larger.

Yes, the two bison in the picture are peeing...they were mad 

that the wranglers kicked them off our wagon trail. 

 

  

That pretty much all that happened our first two days here in Yellowstone and it’s been an adventure to say the least.   

                                      In the words of the Chuck Wagon Trail:

 

 

 

Day Five Chico to...Chico

Day Five

Chico Hot Springs to…………Chico Hot Springs

 

This is our room...it's super small and the bed... we're pretty sure it was made in the early

1900's





This is the view from our room. I took this picture in the morning when it was still foggy, but it is a beautiful view.

The hotel is wonderful, because of the old timey feel...except at night when the "old timey feel" become a creepy feel (to Jess). One bathroom has officially been named the creepy bathroom. It has a claw foot tub with a window directly behind it. At night, the wind howls and moves the curtains around while the tub's hot and cold valves won't turn off completely and make this awful dripping sound....white flowing howling curtains and dripping noises...maybe I've seen too many scary movies... But this girl ain't going in that room to tinkle at night, thank you very much.

 Ready….OK! Today. We. Did. As. Little. As. Possible. When we awoke we both were ravenous. So we sauntered, nee, Jess sprinted with the speed of a thousand pronghorn antelope (it’s the fastest land mammal in North America, duh) down in the 40 degree June morning to the plentiful breakfast buffet. Jess discovered she doesn’t like boysenberry syrup, it was pretty ok....according to Mike. I've been meaning to get his tasters checked.

We then decided to swim in the hot spring, which was REALLY hot! Twas so hot that it was steaming profusely into the crisp Montana sky. We found out the 100,000 gallen pool's water circulates every 6-8 hours and therefore needs no chlorine or sea salt. (Jess's hair and skin loved that.)  The scene it painted was that of an old painter who painted lovely paintings. The wind was whipping like pure nastiness and caused us to exit the enveloping comfort of the pool (we passed the pruny finger test).

Oh, this is embarrassing, we ate lunch at our favorite little lunch spot here at Chico and…..we totally skipped out on the bill, more on that later. Once we had warmed back up we came to the decision to stroll around the grounds of our resort and spa (it was still REALLY cold and SUPER windy). 

We took our obligatory ukulele picture (we have officially decided on a name for our ukulele, it will henceforth be known as Wind brings high pitched woman songs or Dex for short). Once our fingers were frozen into fingercicles (Jess totally wore her awesome woolen mittens) we hit up the gift shop/espresso bar. What a delightful combination.

 

 

 We bought some souvenirs and returned to the main lodge to play some hard fought, feud inducing  board games (Battleship(no aliens included), connect4(no aliens included), checkers(aliens included)). We played pool. Jess beat me at pool twice. Then we ate dinner. Well, when we were ready to pay for our delicious pizza our server asked us if we were in the restaurant earlier that day, we responded in the affirmative. She then told us that we hadn’t paid our previous bill…..oops. So we paid both bills and that makes us awesome again. Now we’re sitting in the extensive volume filled hallways of the Chico Hot Springs library (drip drip dripping with sarcasm). We shall commence another game at some point this evening and potentially get a dessert, maybe not. Tomorrow is the big day when we check in for work at Yellowstone. We will be checking in at 8:00 mountain time. So think of us as most of you are sitting at work. Love you guys!!! Have fun and live it up! KEEP LIVING YOUR DREAMS!!!!!!

P.S. We are currently learning Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash and La Bamba by Richie Valens (Los Lobos doesn’t count) on Dex our wonderful, patient and constantly forgiving ukulele. 

<---These are our under 21, not drinking or in our case, the coolest kids in the hotel tags.