Yellowstone

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After crashing for the night in Small Town, Montana, we headed to the casino before driving into Yellowstone. There are casinos all over the place in Montana, most of which are just tiny rooms with a few video machines. No dealers, and you can’t win more than $800. It’s not quite Vegas, but it’ll do for a free drink and good people watching. We spent about an hour just playing video slots and keno, and then loaded up at the gas station for our drive west.

As we drove closer to Yellowstone, the scenery became more and more beautiful. Especially after driving through boring, flat North Dakota and Canada, the mountain views were a welcome change. We drove through a tiny town right outside the north entrance to the park, where we ate some lovely wraps at a tiny gas station and general store. The town looked like a picture out of an old Western; just little shops and houses with enormous mountains as the backdrop. Not a bad place to settle down, eh.

Once inside the park, we still had to drive for about 3 hours to get to our campsite. No one realized how big the place is until we were inside. Whilst driving, we had to stop for some elk crossing, and also stopped to snap some pictures of an old buffalo chillin’ under a tree. It’s funny that while driving around the park, we didn’t really have to be on the lookout for wildlife because so many people already have their cars pulled over if there’s something good on the side of the road. It’s pretty convenient actually.

We finally reached our campsite, and spent some time setting up and playing Frisbee before it got dark. P.S. Yellowstone is freezing at night. We grilled up some veggies over the fire and headed to bed early. Once we realized how cold it was, no one could stand to be outside after we finished eating. However, I must say that the stars at night were like nothing I’ve ever seen. They were just magnificent. Better than Camp Micah. I said it. It helps being in the middle of nowhere with no lights. The nighttime was a little bit scary, however, because all we could hear was animal noises coming from the woods. There was this loud squeaking or squealing sound that was coming from the forest the entire night. What was it? Nobody knows. What I do know is that the noises made midnight bathroom trips just terrifying.

We shivered our way through the evening, and once the sun was up, we were off. We ate some milk and cereal, packed a lunch (with dessert) and began our journey to Mt. Washburn. The day we arrived, I checked out some good hikes around Yellowstone, and Washburn was very highly rated. It was about an hour’s drive from our campsite, and along the way we stopped several times for some photo ops. There were some buffalo roaming about, and we took some cool pics at both the upper and lower falls. The falls are located at a spot called the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and it just made me excited to see the actual Grand Canyon once we’re further south. Most of the drive was along the river, which is a deep blue and creates quite a nice contrast to the yellowy grass. Beautiful.

When we arrived at Mt. Washburn, we saw that it was about a 6-7 mile hike roundtrip. Additionally, we read that there would be goats and other wildlife about. We began our ascent, with Rob looking quite dashing toting my pink backpack (but quite the gentleman, I must say) with all of our supplies inside. The hike was pretty rockin’. Every turn was a better view than the last, and we ended up seeing a lonely goat herd up on the hill. They just chilled on the side of the path while we walked by, though they maintained eye contact for quite a while. Mr. Goat kicked my ass at that staring contest. Plus he had a goatee. Get it? A GOATee.

We walked and walked until we reached the summit. For a bit, it was a little scary because it was just a narrow path with a cliff on the other side. Much like in the Negev in Israel, I freaked out a little, but pushed through. The path was super rocky, but what was really tough though, was the wind. It got colder and colder as we hiked up, and the wind was pretty brutal. It was just gusting here and there and everywhere. However, the views were just spectacular at the peak, and there was a little house where we had 360 views (including some geysers a’goin’ off in the distance) and we spent some time eating sandwiches. And M&Ms. If only we had some boxed wine.

We were quite proud of ourselves because the sign at the trailhead said the whole hike took like 4-5 hours and we finished the whole thing in less than three. Including sandwich time. The walk down was a little brutal on the quads, but you know, such is life. The most remarkable thing that happened on the walk down the mountain was that we found out that Rob had never heard a Dave Matthew’s album. What?! So on the drive home, we cruised in silence to Crash, where we exposed Rob to some amazeballs songs, all whilst watching buffalo along the side of the road. That night, we just grilled some food and took our coin showers before crashing out for the night.

The next day, Abigail and I had to get some homework done. We drove around in search of a place to plug in (because the campsite was totes electric-free). After a delicious breakfast buffet (which distracted us from the homework quest, but was chock full of bacon and biscuits and gravy and grapefruit and pineapple and sausage and coffee), we found a little café for us to get some work done. Nothing like sitting in front of a computer screen in Yellowstone. Actually, my research for my class is becoming quite interesting. Not relevant.

We found a cool hike to go on after finishing some homework. It was just a little guy, not like Washburn, that took us on a loop to a cool overlook of the lake. Since it was freezing and kind of rainy, we all just hiked in sweats. Pretty hardcore. After the hike, we went to the West Thumb Geyser, which has really cool deep hot water lake things. They’re beautiful blue/green in color but the inside almost looks like ice. It’s not though, because it’s hot. It felt nice on such a cold day. Plus, there were tons of these little thermal pools all overlooking the West Thumb Lake. Pretty rockin.

We got back to camp and decided to make an early dinner. We cooked up some veggies and hot dogs, and because it was so cold and a little drizzly, we hit the hay a little early. Actually, we got into bed at 5:45pm. The downside to camping in Yellowstone is that on yuck days, there’s really nothing to do outside and there's nothing close by. But, we spent several hours answering questions from our road trip activity books.

Night three was the coldest by far on the trip. It dropped to about 25, plus it was raining. Turns out, our tent isn’t waterproof. We were all awakened in the morn by raindrops falling on our heads (and directly into Rob’s eye) and wet sleeping bags. Just lovely.

We packed up the camp as quickly as possible to get the hell out of that campsite. We all had pretty miserable nights, and there’s really nothing like rolling up air mattresses with frigid fingertips and just water water everywhere. On the good news front, I found out from a little booklet left in the bathroom that Jesus loves me. Win! On the way out of the park, we stopped at Old Faithful. Great timing, us. We walked in, grabbed some coffee, and off she went! Rob missed it.

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