July 22nd

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I think the 22nd has been my favorite day so far. I started out leaving Old Faithful pretty early in the morning so I could travel to Canyon to get Lindsay. There are two ways to get to Canyon from Old Faithful. You can either drive south and then north through Grant Village and the Lake or you can drive North and then East through Madison and Norris. I was planning to drive North towards Norris but when I got to the highway there were two girls who were Canyon Employees who were trying to hitchhike to Grant Village. Hitchhiking is a normal option of travel for employees without cars. All you have to do is make a sign saying where you work and where you are going and someone will pick you up. Sometimes it is fellow off-duty employees, sometimes they get picked up by on duty employee trucks, and sometimes tourists pick them up hoping to learn more about the park. I took the girls to Grant Village and they actually fell asleep on the way so they must have been tired.

After I dropped them off I had to travel North through Lake and Hayden Valley. Bad Idea Yo. It is Bison mating season so they bison are being erratic and the tourists are entranced by the scene. I got stuck in a small Bison jam as soon as I entered Hayden Valley. I spent about 20 minutes getting through the mess before I could continue onward. A little farther up the road I got detained because a car had gone off the road and down a large hill. Luckily the rangers were on scene and a tow truck was winching the car up the hillside. Even further down the road I got stuck for almost an hour. A large herd of bison was crossing the road and everyone had to wait until the whole herd crossed. Let me tell you something.....Bison....are slow.

After all of that I finally made it to Canyon and eventually found Lindsay. We ate a quick lunch at the Employee Dining Room (onion ring day!) and headed North to Roosevelt. We stopped by Roosevelt Lodge looking for our friend Craig but he was no where to be seen. We had excellent timing and were able to get on a stagecoach ride for free(because we were employees). It was short and pretty uneventful but an experience none the less. Once we were done we continued on to Gardiner which is just outside the park. We were planning on shopping, getting something to eat for Lindsay's birthday and then going back to Old Faithful. Instead we decided to keep driving to Bozeman to go to Walmart and getting a nicer meal than we could find in Gardiner. We made excellent time in Bozeman but while we were in the store we heard some people talking about a hail storm on its way. The sky looked fine to us when we passed the entrance to go grab some sunscreen so we kept shopping. After we got the sunscreen we passed the door again and were shocked at what we saw. The storm it hard and blew displays around like paper, pushed hail inside the building, and put a severe strain on the power system. Lindsay braved the storm to take a video but we later discovered she didn't hit the record button........that must be why we are friends.... We were stuck in the store for an extra hour waiting for the storm to pass and for the cashier systems to come back online. Afterwards we went to Applebees for her birthday dinner, to Target, and headed back to Yellowstone. The drive home was soooooo friggin scary. The fog was thick thick thick and we could barely see. We were super freaked out. As we were driving we both felt like there were open praries on either side of us (When we drove back through the next day to take Lindsay home we found out the praries were actually rock walls, cliffs, and canyons). The whole way home the thing we feared most was that the spirit of an Indian Chief was going to materialize out of the fog in front of us..... Silly Girls. Once we safely back at Old Faithful we had oreos and milk and I taught Lindsay how to knit.

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Photos

Flowers
Flowers I saw while I was waiting for the Bison to move.

Chuckwagon
This is bringing the food out to the Cowboy Cookout.

Lindsay
After her heroic videotaping (or camera holding depending on how you look at it...) holding hail.

Hail
Taken a bit after the storm we we finally left. Most of the hail melted but you can still see some.

Flooded Cars
The water was so high!