Rain+days off work with out friends=cabin fever

It’s been a cloudy week at Yellowstone. In fact, it’s been raining and/or storming on my days off and relatively nice while I’m inside cleaning rooms. It’s actually raining quite steadily at the moment. That hasn’t stopped me from going out, though—at least for the most part. Last Thursday (5/27), Jillian, I, and two friends named Mike and Michael went on a hike called Osprey Falls. The trail head is an hour from the lake, but the hike is definitely worth the drive. It’s a 4 mile hike that culminates at an 800 foot waterfall and then there is another 4 miles back out. It’s mostly rolling hills until the switchbacks along the steep canyon walls that lead to and from the waterfall and river. On the hike, we saw a few elk, a marmot, a few bison, and part of an elk skeleton consisting of its backbone and skull. While driving there, we saw a coyote and then on the drive back to the lake, we saw a black wolf! He was a couple hundred yards away so my camera wouldn’t have worked, but I got a good look at it through Jillian’s binoculars. There were a lot of people stopped along the side of the road photographing the animal with their supersized wildlife lenses.

The next night, a group of us were relaxing in the common room and realized we didn’t actually have much to do apart from get angry at the ridiculously slow internet. So, I suggested we make a blanket fort with our bed sheets and the available furniture and that’s what we did. It ended up being a lot of fun and quite a few people joined in our party.

On Saturday after work, Jillian, Emily and I went for a hike at a 2 mile trail called Storm Point. We ended up hiking through heavily falling snow which actually provided for cool picture opportunities. We did not see any wildlife, but while hiking through the woods, we definitely heard a pack of coyotes or wolves or something barking and yelping. That was quite exciting.

Since Angela went home on Wednesday (6/2) (for personal reasons), Emily, Max, Angela, and I went for one last hike together on Tuesday late afternoon. We hiked up the Elephant Back Trail through drizzling rain and trekked our way through knee deep snow at the mountain’s top. We were rewarded at the top, though, because the view reaches for several miles over the hotel and across the lake and we were able to see the clouds breaking up over the snowy mountains and the yellow evening sunshine falling on the ridges. We had to book it down the mountain, however, in order to get some hot food from the EDR before they ran out of it. We didn’t see any spectacular wildlife, but it’s amazing how different the forest appears depending on the weather of the day. It can change from totally dry evergreen to a rainforest like atmosphere to a (cold) tropical cloud forest to a snowy North American pine forest.

After dinner last night, Emily and I saw a mama grizzly and her cub up close. They were in the woods right next to our dorm and they crossed our path about 30 yards in front of us. It was really exciting, but there were so many people around that the two of them got out of there as fast as possible. Later on that night, I played softball for the first time in a few years. Since they need females to be part of the park league, Emily and I played (partially doing them a favor and partially because we wanted to). I surprised myself and actually hit a lot of the pitches thrown to me. It was a fun evening and I’m looking forward to playing again.
It’s lunch time. Shalom!