a various cacophany of adventures and dehydration...

Timberrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr camp.

Lately we’ve been counting down the days until we go home. Not that we’re unhappy here or anything it’s just that we feel like we’ve accomplished almost everything we came up here to do. So, with that in mind we are attempting to polish off the last few things on our list of “to do’s.” One of those things was camping….not backpacking mind you but honest to goodness “car camping.” Our friends Amanda and Lori gently urged us to give the whole camping thing another shot so we did. We looked around for a good place to go. First we looked at locations inside the park but they’re all way too busy. Next we looked outside the park since the tourists generally only stay on the major roads and rarely camp inside the park the options outside the park are pretty much wide open and available. It didn’t take us long to find a place called Timber Camp outside the small town of Jardine which is outside the small town of Gardiner…it’s all about the series of small towns up here, but we love it. Anywho, last Sunday we (Jess, Amanda and myself ) went for a drive up to scope out the campsites that were available at this so called “Timber Camp.” It was basically a large forested area with an odd little meadow thrown in the middle. On one side of the meadow in the trees there was a small stream that ran through the camp. It was typical of what a mountain camp would look like. There were three campsites that we could choose from, one was closest to the stream and bathroom (it was really just a hole in the ground with some walls put around it), the second one was on a trail over to the horse corrals which were part of the camp but separated by some trees (with very few possible tent sites this one wasn’t really an option) and the third one was up by the road and was relatively small compared to the other two. We decided we would take the first one if it was available when we got there Friday night. On those in between days we (in this exact order) worked, worked, worked, climbed a mountain (Mount Washburn, 10,243 feet high to be exact, and worked. You read that right WE CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN!!! It was pretty awesome and difficult. It got really windy and pretty cold up on top of that mountain. When Friday finally came around we were ready for some more outdoor adventure. We had planned a gourmet meal of hot dogs and smores……..

Sorry to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming but we have a very important announcement to make. Uh hum…..we would like to announce…….we……went……swimming in the Firehole River and it was amazing. When you first climb into the river it’s frighteningly cold so you immediately begin to think the name is merely a clever coincidence that its name creates vivid pictures of a boiling tempest. It was actually somewhere around 70 degrees which wasn’t awful. As you can most likely guess it’s a river so there’s pretty strong current. If you decide to enjoy the Firehole river and all its wonders it should be a requirement that you have to at least push against the current to make it past the first set of cliffs and underwater barricades. Jess and I pushed our way all the way to the origin of the canyon where the current is the strongest and flung ourselves into the gaping jaws of the watery beast. It was pretty fun. The current pulled us under a couple times and threw me into a rock shelf but it was a blast. We both highly recommend it. Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming……

Showing the elevation. Jess wanted to be a part of the picture too....

Not much air pressure up here!

This is three panoramic pictures put into one huge panorama.

This is for you, James

…….Thanks for that important news bulletin! We will now resume with our riveting tale of the Timber Camp experience. We painstakingly prepared our exquisite meal of hot dogs, brats and chips over the fire. It was a delicious gourmet experience that prompted our taste buds to explode with enthusiasm. After dinner we sat and talked around the campfire. Once we got too cold to stand it we all crawled into our respective tents and attempted to sleep in the freezing cold mountain air. It got down to something around 34 degrees that night which was not something I was expecting. The next morning we slowly got up and cooked breakfast, sausage and eggs. It was superb. Once we got moving we cleaned up camp and went for a short walk around our campsite just to see what else was out there. We didn’t miss much.  On our way back into town we stopped at an old mountain cemetery. It was pretty cool to see this little cemetery stuck on the only flat spot for 2 miles on the side of a mountain. That was our camping trip. No more, no less. In short, car camping is for us…backpacking , not so much.

This is the manged fox that pretty much came up to us as we were enjoying our delicious smores.