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