Hadesroaring Creek and fun with Bears: volume 7

The previous day to the current day(7/15/12)…..

Well, here it is. We went on our backpacking trip and it was adventurous to say the least. The hike out wasn’t a huge deal except that it was probably close to 90 degrees and the mosquitos and horse flies were awful (I still have big nasty red spots from the flies on my arms). We both got pretty whipped on the hike out so that wasn’t fun but we toughed it out and made it. 4.7 miles from our car to the camp site. One of the only negatives about living up here is that it’s so dry its really easy to get dehydrated even if you think you’re drinking enough water you totally aren’t. That’s what happened to me once we got to camp. 

Once we actually made it to our camp we started to set everything up like our tent and the ever essential hammocks. We filtered some water out of the river and went to relax in our hammocks. As I finished tying mine to the trees we had chosen and began to sit in it the rope stretched and what was 2 ½ feet off the ground became 4 inches off the ground. Then it happened, snap, the stupid rope broke and I landed right smack on the point of a rock that was sticking out of the ground, it hurt. We then decided it was time to eat some dinner so we went to our designated dining facility, a rock underneath some trees about 115 yards away from our tent (I stepped it off just for giggles). Our culinary masterpiece consisted of greasy peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and a banana. Jess forced herself to eat all of hers and I only had a couple bites of mine. 

By this time it had begun to cool off considerably so I went and laid in our tent while Jess went back to her hammock with its ever so reliable mosquito net. A side effect of dehydration is lack of appetite while yet another is a pounding headache. I was experiencing both of these at this time. I made it my personal goal to drink as much water as I could but not to overdo it. I ended up drinking around 3 liters of water that night. After a while Jess came and joined me in the tent and we read our scriptures on my phone and we decided to see if we could stay up and watch some of the stars since it would be a perfect night for it. Of course Jess fell right asleep while I stayed awake for a large majority of the night, it was awful. In the little amount of sleep I got I kept having dreams of female animals, Elk, Bison, Grizzly Bears and the absolute worse, a Mountain Lion kept peeking into our tent just to look at us. I have no idea why it completely freaked me out but it did and I didn’t sleep…..this made for a wonderful day Tuesday. 

Sunday night while Jess was typing up our previous blog post I was busy packing our bags and organizing our stuff. In a kind of bonehead move I didn’t really think about packing the bags too efficiently, that was a bad idea. On the hike out Jess’s pack was packed rather unevenly and it produced some sweet bruises on her hips and shoulders. So Tuesday morning I completely changed the way her bag was packed and it made a huge difference to her. So we ate our lovely breakfast and packed up our camp and hit the trail. 

We made really good progress doing about 2 miles in somewhere around 40 minutes. We took about a 15 minute break then got back up and hit the trail. After about 200 yards I stopped in the middle of the trail and asked Jess “what is that in the trail?” she responds “what is it a whistle pig?” (a whistle pig is a small ground squirrel that is all over the place here). Of course it wasn’t and I pointed to a specific area on the trail and said “no, THAT!” she responds “is that a bear?!” Sure enough it was a Black bear that was red in color (they call them cinnamon black bears). At this point the bear was about 100 yards away and it totally knew we were there and was watching us very intently. We started yelling at the bear so we moved off the trail and pushed our way up the ridgeline to our left. Once we got to the top of the ridge the bear was closer than it was before, maybe 60 yards now and it was headed our way. Luckily we had our bear spray and advanced brains on our sides. We were at the top of the ridge and by means beyond our own the bear decided we weren’t fit to eat. So we pushed on over the ridge and made our way back to the trailhead. 

On the hike up I was looking ahead on the trail and step on an unsteady rock and twisted my ankle, hooray. I fought through and we eventually made it back to the trailhead. Out by our campsite some Park Rangers were working on a wood bridge that crossed the Hellroaring Creek. They apparently finished the work on the bridge after we passed them Tuesday morning and headed back to the trailhead as well. They had a team of horses and mules to carry the equipment and supplies out. The stock team passed us as we finished our climb and were ½ a mile from the parking lot. No big deal right…until we got to the parking lot. Apparently one of the mules got spooked and we don’t know if it kicked or just flat out ran into our car but either way our passenger side mirror got broke and the passenger side door has a couple small dents in it at the bottom. Luckily the park service said they would pay for repairs. It’s not a huge deal but it was just one more thing to add to the list. 

As we got loaded up and headed back to the main road to go back to Mammoth we saw people standing in the road and sitting on the roadside having a picnic, this is not normal. As we later found out there was traffic over 2 miles long backed up in both directions because someone drove a truck pulling a horse trailer into a ditch…great. From what we saw all the horses looked fine. After that last obstacle we finally made it back to Mammoth and showered and napped. It was glorious. 

Other than our adventures from Monday and Tuesday not a whole lot happened other than hanging out with some of our friends and eating some delicious food. Life is good up here in Yellowstone and despite all the negatives from our camping trip in hindsight it was a blast and made for a great story that we’ll be able to tell for years to come. Hope you enjoyed reading and good luck with your stuff and things.

Chester the Chipmunk wanted us to tell you guys hi. (Jess finally got a shot of a REAL chipmunk)

July Birthday Shout out!

This week July 4-8

We are no longer affiliated with Dep or LA Looks…it’s a long story that involves a bear, a piece of gum and a paper clip. I don’t wanna get into it; just know….we won. For the Fourth of July we had to work. Stinky, I Know…but it wasn’t too bad. It was super slow...like read 6 chapters in my book slow and everyone at work was in a good mood. We’re in Mammoth and they do a “parade” every Fourth which we didn’t go to because we were getting ready to go to work. The parade started at  8:00am. Only big city parades can get away with doing it that early in the morning. These people are on vacation and I’m pretty sure most of them don’t get up that early. Especially if the parade consisted of a grand total of 10 people walking around the hotel and cabins and then ending up in front of the hotel and singing (off key) the Star Spangled Banner. Mike said they used to have an awesome parade where they would bring the horses out and a ranger would be in it and everything…had they told me I would have gladly put something together. People were calling in days before the 4^th of July trying to get in the park, which Mike and I never understood because the park doesn’t do anything for the 4^th…but to each their own. Despite the lame parade, we had a great 4^th. We when to the Gilbert’s and ate yummy food and then played a mean game of badminton…emphasis of the BAD. David Gilbert thought he’d be funny and said, “The first person to hit me with the birdie gets the first piece of pie.” 10 minutes later he was regretting that statement when his daughter (who was on his team) whet to serve the birdie and hit him WACK on the back of the head. I earned the second piece when I was serving and hit Sharon Gilbert in the stomach (she was on my team too). Lori Doss rocked it out that day. Pretty sure we won because of her. We weren’t supposed to be keeping score…but I’m 99% positive our team won. Happy late 4^th to everyone.

We don’t mind our jobs but honestly, we didn’t come here to work. So working 11 hour shifts isn’t our favorite thing to do in Yellowstone. I almost…ok I did, had a few hours of self-pity and homesickness. We get home at 6:00pm and we’re too pooped to go out and do anything.  Luckily, we have an awesome boss, Lori. She understands and is willing to work with us on the schedule. I find it interesting that the more money one earns working for Xanterra, the more they take out of your paycheck for rent and such. We just as soon work 20 hours a week and still get the same benefits that all the other employees are getting working 40 hours. While they're working, we’ll be hiking out in this beautiful country. Sounds fair, right?

We went out for Angel’s birthday Saturday night. He’s from Bulgaria and is known for saying ool instead of owl and for being Bulgarian. His girlfriend, Bethany surprised him and had one of the cooks make him this amazing yellow cream cheese frosting with strawberries on top cake. It was gone in a matter of minutes. One of the girls bought a TON of glowsticks and we had a blast with them. Allison even did magic tricks for us. I can’t express how funny that was. Mike said he would describe it as, “the worst possible magic show on the face of the planet.” It was pretty awful, but I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. (Meaning not since the 4^th when Dave got WACKED in the head with the birdie)

 Also, this is a birthday shout out! Happy birthday to Nathan R. Mickle, Buster Rock Wilson, Jacob R. Chavez, Robin G. Wilson and Jess R. Wilson…yes I said it to myself. Notice we all have an “R” middle initials…except Robin….oh Robin, always gotta be different. AND some awesome Uncles: Rodney R. Chavez and Randy R. Garrison…  Also awesome July non-family members: Walker R. Wright, Alice R. Dutton, Carla R. Cullum, Greg R. Severn, Garrett R. Ferguson (same birthday, he’s a few hours older than I am), Sarah R. Bolton, Judy R. Gwilliam, Angel R. Andonov…and everyone else who has a birthday in July with a middle initial of R. HAPPY BIRTHDAY! I’ve informed Mike that this is my birthday MONTH…meaning I get whatever I want for the WHOLE month. He just rolled his eyes because I think he feels like it’s always my birthday month. 

Mike also gave a talk today at church about the 12^th Article of Faith. Try making that interesting while not talk talking about politics. He did an amazing job, though. (as if there was any doubt) If you don’t know what the Articles of Faith are you can click here and read them. They’re the basic beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Tomorrow we’re going to Hellroaring Creek and we’ll hike about 15-20 miles over the next two days. My first backpacking trip…Wish us luck. 

Lastly, we saw a full on Double Rainbow. 
ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE SKY!!!!

   

Jess' birthday and stuff!

 Howdy folks!

Welcome to the weekly installment of the Wandering Wilson’s Wanderings and such, brought to you by Dep and LA Looks, you’re always looking good with LA Looks. On this week’s installment we will discuss Pronghorn, Black Bears, Hoodoo’s, caves, Old Faithful and the Old Faithful Inn, and various other magnificence including waking up at 3……..am……you read that right, 3AM. We hope you enjoy this as much as we did……do…….are enjoying……havingness…..whatever.

                Jesssssssss misssssesssss Mr. Roy’s salsa, it’s not very good up here atall. 

                In beginning we went out to a lovely destinanation for those who wish to watch animals such as Bison bison (more commonly known as Bison), Pronghorn Antelope (who aren’t actually Antelope at all), Bears of various nature (Ursus arctos horribilis and Ursus americanus amongst others) and even the much loved Canis lupus. When we found a spot from which to observe the Pronghorn Antelope, our target for the night, we settled in to see how they would behave over the next few hours while we were watching. The group began with two females sitting in the grass and very quickly grew to six females and one male. After a few more minutes another male showed up (a few hundred yards away) and the original male began the chase to scare him off. They ran around for quite some time at a very high speed. Eventually the chase brought them close enough to us that we could hear them grunting and snorting at each other as the sprinted through the sage brush about 20 yards away. We stood there in awe as they darted across the road immediately in front of us. On our way home we decided to stop and see if we could see any bears at their usual spots. We stopped by the petrified tree and saw a black bear staring down two mule deer bucks. That was fun to watch.

                We’ll be right back after a word from our sponsor’s…..Use Dep if you want your hair to withstand hurricane force winds, DEP!

Alright and we’re back! There is a beautiful spot that we have gone on a hike through which we discussed in an earlier post, it is called the Hoodoos. The name is a complete misnomer because hoodoos are actually a formation carved by wind and rain whereas these hoodoos were most likely created by an earthquake and the greatness that is the freeze/thaw cycle. Basically it’s a huge field of massive tumbled boulders. It’s perfect for climbing around in and ‘sploring as Jess puts it. We went climbing around for a bit, I went bouldering and Jess took pictures. It was a blast. While we were climbing around we found a cave where some of the larger boulders fell together and created a pretty big hole. What else do we have to do but climb inside. It was pretty deep and significantly cooler than outside the cave. It didn’t really go anywhere that we could fit but at one point Jess kicked a rock and we heard it drop and bounce off other rocks for what sounded like a good 6 feet then it splashed in some water. It was very impressive. 

                This brings us to Sunday. As most of you that may be reading this know we are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Fortunately for us there happens to be a small congregation in Gardiner, Montana which is about an 8 minute drive from our dorm to the front door of the church. Compared to our church at home which was about 200 people every Sunday this branch is a consistent 25-30 people on a weekly basis. When we got here we requested that our records be sent up here so we could help out the branch in whatever way possible. Our records showed up on Sunday so we are now officially members of the Gardiner, Montana Branch in the Bozeman, Montana Stake. It’s kind of cool to be in such a small unit of the church. We pretty much know everyone and the Spirit is awesome. We’ve also met some really cool people who have welcomed us into their homes and shared some great times with us. Most recently we were introduced to “suicide badminton.” It is a very intensely humiliating game that we played last night for Family Home Evening. Jess and I were terrible. But it was a blast. 

                Now for another word from our sponsors, LA Looks!

                We’d like to thank our sponsors Dep and LA Looks for their generous support. Sunday night we got lucky and were able to book a room at the Old Faithful Inn for the night. This was Jess’s birthday present from me. 

We were also planning on waking up early to try and catch the Photo Safari from the Lake Yellowstone Hotel, on the opposite side of the lower loop…..it’s about an hour and a half away with no traffic. The Photo Safari leaves at 5:45 in the AM. Despite this early start we meandered around the Old Faithful Inn enjoying the fiddle playing and pianist before we set out to explore the Upper Geyser Basin as it is known. It truly is an amazing place with boiling water that is the deepest , purest blue you’ve ever seen pouring out of the ground sometimes at a rate of 100 gallons per hour from one spring. Sometimes the smells are a little overpowering but the views are worth it. As the sun set and it began to cool off the geysers and hot pools began to show some steam and when looking down the valley to the north of Old Faithful you could a series of steam clouds rising from the various geysers. It was truly amazing and a wondrous sight to behold. 

 

 

 

My trusty alarm unfortunately went off as planned, at 3:00am and we started the long trek to Lake Yellowstone Hotel. On the way we got a beautiful view of the moon setting and the sun rising over the mountains. We saw two coyotes run across the road just ahead of us and saw several Bison and Elk sleeping with spitting distance from the road (yes that is an appropriate measure of distance). We actually arrived at the hotel an hour early and found out there wasn’t enough room for the two of us to take the photo safari trip. So, with heads hanging down we made the long drive back to Mammoth Hot Springs. We made a few stops along the way to view the sunrise from a few opportune spots. Despite the early hour it was a lovely drive and I am grateful we did that trip. 

 

              

 That just about sums up our adventures over the past week. We hope everyone out there is safe and healthy and avoiding those crazy forest fires. Stay safe and use your brains, you have them for a reason!

Loves,

Michael and Jess!

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.