Day 13

We assumed that we didn’t need to set an alarm while camping, thinking the sun and joyful voices of fellow campers would raise us from our slumber. Incorrect! We slept until after 10 because the best sleep came after the sun came up and the temperatures climbed out of the 30s, Andrew had found his way back into his sleeping bag after waking up trembling and with chattering teeth, and I’d pulled my hoodie up over my wool cap and abandoned fresh air for a warm nose inside of my sleeping bag.

Despite our late start, we had an itinerary to follow- the glorious National Parks of the West gave us a “Yellowstone in 2 days” plan that sounded tantalizing, so we shoved some granola bars in our mouths and set out for the Yellowstone Fishing Bridge and Hamilton store on the East side, where we were disappointed to find they didn’t offer Gardenburgers (we wanted to do a cookout that night – but to no avail). Instead, we bought a couple of bananas and ate them as we walked to the fishing bridge, wondering if a big bear would jump out and snatch it from our hands.

Immediately after walking onto the bridge, we saw a half dozen pelicans flying in to patron the water just below. Immediately we become the bloodthirsty type of nature viewers. Andrew had the camera trained on the most aggressive bird.

“C’Mon! Get get the fish! Go! Go! Any second now! C’MON!”

I nearly pass out from excitement because someone tells me the moving dot is a WOLF swimming towards the visible island. I decide this will no longer do. No more animal viewing from afar – if we want an encounter, we have to go deep. We take a path in much farther than the island, find out from a returning hiker that is was a coyote, and not a wolf, that caught my eye, and that there is a beaver up ahead. Yes! Now I can’t think about anything else until we find ourselves face to face with a pair of elk who are not as frightened of us as I anticipated. Andrew figures out the timer option on the camera and we play at posing on a log with the elk in the background before getting close enough to get some candid shots of the massive, antlered one.

We head back to the car as is starts to rain, never having set eyes on the mystical beaver, and stop for a picnic of Peanut Butter Bumpers cereal and applesauce when the sky clears. On the way to our next destination, we see a bison on the side of the road and I temporarily forget the warnings of recent human/buffalo gorings as I get up close and personal with Mr. Big Head Bison.

A SWARM of elderly people on a guided bus tour beat us to the Artist’s Point viewing area of the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. We politely duck and weave through the comments of

“My, this is more crowded than Disneyland!”
“Excuse me, excuse me! Well, I didn’t think I would have to say it more than once, but you learn something new every day.”
“Ooo! It’s lovely! Where is the bathroom?”

Andrew mutters in my ear “Kids these days….” and we slide off the concrete onto a hiking trail that takes you along the rim of the multicolored canyon created by a rushing waterfall. As it turns out, I was also unsuccessful at finding a bathroom at the popular viewing point, and was forced to pee in the woods while Andrew laughed and provided security.

Next stop, and hike #3 for the day, we went to the water falls in the Upper Brink, where my tendency to get as close to the edge as possible for the best view, even if it means hopping over railings or crawling onto rocky outcrops, finally got to be too much for Andrew, who spurted, “No. No. You are not going over there. I am not losing you to a waterfall.”

Hungry and still following our National Park guide book, we went over to the Canyon Villiage Lodge for dinner. The wait was about 45 minutes, but we grabbed our books out of the car and enjoyed drinks on the couches in the lobby area before we experienced the mediocre dinner at the lodge. Turns out Andrew’s “Salmon sandwich” was actually a compact, freezerific pink patty.

We looked for a place to watch the sunset as we drove back to the campsite (which, by the way, was over an hour from where we ended up). We pulled over when we saw a 10 person group of very excited people with binoculars, where we pretended we could see the distant grizzly bear as the sun dropped below the mountain. Then we returned to our campground, rejoicing that the tent was already set up and that the forecast low predicted a balmy 42 degrees!

- Emily Entry!