After our wonderfully well recieved (even though it poured on Saturday) show in Minneapolis at Edina, we took off toward our Island Home on Lopez in the Pacific Northwest...
Victoria, mistress of the keyboards, goddess of all things to do with trip planning, and all around great planner, arranged to end up at our friends in Gardiner, MT the week that the Yellowstone 'opens'. Of course Lu Harlow, V's friend from College, is the Food and Beverage Director for the entire park and so we did have a fabulous meal at the Mammouth Inn the first night we were there... but that is not what I was thinking of when I started this post!
We (Vand I) got up early and went for a wonderful walk through the town of Gardiner with Lu in the morning... it is a real rough-n-ready sort of frontier town that perches on the steep banks of the river squashed by mountains and the national park. This is the town that has store-front churches and probably 25 different drinking establishments in a place with fewer than 2000 residents. The architechture is a mix of the handi-man-get-it-up-before-winter specials and the 140 year old stone cottages that made alot of sense back in the day...
The rivers are full... so full and fast that you really can't go fishing in them- bummer- and, apparently, people fall in the water and aren't found ever again... yowser!
We spent the entire rest of the day (really until well after 7pm) hiking around in Yellowstone! Started by meeting a mare(?) Elk with her baby that was about 2 hours old! V got great pix of that but I did not...
We went up to the Geysers and walked around looking at the various holes in the terrain that were bubbling and spewing and steaming. Of course we had to remind ourselves that we were not looking at Fox News.
From there we did a bit of Waterfall inspection... and of course they are not conveniently placed near the road- one of them Xan and I hiked down 600 (vertical) feet to get to- but it was worth it. They don't tell you that 600 feet down is a bit over a mile and a half, each way, on the switchback paths that you take to get there... Stunning panorama when you make it there though. There was another way to come down to look at the falls from the front instead of the side but we did not do that...
We did find another hike- down to the base of the Hellroaring Mountains- that was so desolate and devoid of human evidence that, if the romantic pathway through the woods was not there, I would have lost my sense of what century I'm currently in.
On our way back to Lu and Chris' house we did run into a 'park' phenomenon... all of the vechicles in front of us were stopped, in both directions, and all of the folks were on the side of the road... turns out there were a couple of Bull Elks grazing right next to the road! People were completely fearless about walking up to these 6oo pound creatures and sticking a camera in their faces... somewhat insane behavior, to be sure, that our hosts warned us about before we left in the morning...
We made it back home to an everything-on-the-grill dinner and great company...
seems like I'm posting this without all of the great photos for now- transmission errors here at the Library- more Later! Blessings abound!
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