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.