Camping is not for wimps.

Day Six

Unbelievably, we stayed pretty warm during the night in the teepee, but around 6:30 am, my toes finally started getting cold, the kind you can’t get past, and I was awake.  But everyone was up pretty quickly thereafter (not being one of our more comfortable nights).  We had a great camping breakfast of pancakes, fried eggs & sausage, cooked by El Guapo and Liblitz, to make up for our dinner on the previous night.  

Then we were on our way to see the sights of Cody, WY…home of William “Buffalo Bill” Cody.  Ok, mainly we wanted to shop for boots & hats.   And to Nona’s delight, we all had success.  Though she wanted everyone to get cowboy hats, most of us got the hats, and the three that didn’t, instead got genuine (pronounce jen-U-wine in cowboy vernacular) cowboy boots.    While in Cody, we also all tried Venison, Antelope & Buffalo sausage.  

On our quick trip through this quaint town, we actually did meet Buffalo Bill.  He looked right at 5, who at this point was wearing his own cowboy hat and toy gun set previously purchased that morning, and said “Son, let me teach you something about gun control.”  He then proceeded to pull out his own gun, and do a swirling, twirling set of gun tricks, dropping it with a perfect twirl right back into his holster, while 5’s jaw hit the sidewalk with awe.   We were headed out from there to Yellowstone where we’d be camping for the next two nights, and Buffalo Bill sent us off with a warning to make sure we had Bear Spray.  And he assured us he wasn’t kidding, that there had been an issue this year with bears, and we needed bear spray.   

Side note:  I’m still trying to understand the concept of Bear Spray….b/c if a bear gets close enough to me that I can spray him, I’m already a goner.  And if it’s meant to bear repellent, than what’s it smell like, skunk?  It’s got to be bad to keep away a bear, so do I really want to spray myself with this stuff?  

The drive to Yellowstone was of course gorgeous.  We were only about 15 minutes into the park, and we’re all on the lookout for gorgeous scenery, not thinking yet about animals, when all the sudden we pass by a full grown buffalo, just walking along the road, about 5 yards into the tree line.    Wha…?  That thing was massive!  I knew we would see animals, but I just didn’t expect them to be that …. Real. Big. Close!  (Sorry, city girl got the better of me for a minute).  How cool was that?  I don’t know who was more excited, 5 & 7 or the adults.  From then on, it was all eyes scanning the rest of our time in Yellowstone. 

1st Bison we saw, from inside the RV

By the time we reached our campsite, we were starving, so we set up camp, went over the rules, and ate lunch.  Now, up to this point, our camping consisted of hooking in our RV, still making coffee with our Keurig each morning, and sleeping pretty comfy with the AC running at night.  This was camping hard-core.  Yes, I did say go over the rules.  We were in Bear Country, so all food scraps and drops completely cleaned up & all food stored away in vehicles or locked metal boxes, no electrical hookup at all, no running your generator between 8pm-8am….wait, backup?  You mean we can’t make our coffee until 8am when we can run the generator.  Whew, that was a blow.    But all said & done, what a great time we had.  Tough & El Guapo put up camping hammocks, and I think 7 could have stayed in them all day and considered vacation a success.  

 

In fact, we enjoyed some lunchtime entertainment as two other groups came in to our neighboring campsites.  The first had an old couple, the lady got out to direct the man as he backed in their trailer.  They were five feet apart, and the whole thing took about 30 minutes….using walkie-talkies.  The second group was a family from New York, and they unhitched their trailer perfectly, only to have the man back their mini-van right into a tree. 

But after lunch we headed out to see Old Faithful.  We kept trying to explain to 5 & 7 what they were about to see, but it’s hard to explain a geyser to a 5 year old.  We arrived just in time, about 10 minutes from the next eruption, so we picked a spot and waited.  And sure enough, as much as you could count on anything, it went up!  And the kids were blown away….well not literally, just surprised in a great way.  It was awesome.   We explored the Old Faithful Lodge, which has this really cool old wooden crow’s nest inside, but you can’t go up in it b/c in the 50’s there was an earthquake and the wood has been unstable ever since.   Several of us decided we’d come back and stay there sometime. 

This was also the point in the trip when the dogs started to have some fun.  There were often places we’d get out where we couldn’t take them, and come to find out, whenever we left them alone, they’d take the RV joyriding around…probably looking for bears.

We headed back to our campsite, where El Guapo and Liblitz cooked us those frozen steaks, now thawed, with potatoes and veggies, over the open fire.  A real camping meal.  We hiked to the lake, and enjoyed the slow pace, not even realizing we were missing TV.  During our meal, it was well into dusk, but not totally pitch black, and all the dogs in the camp started barking.  Moose is not a barker, but I remember thinking, uh oh, Daphne is about to bark, when all the sudden, 7 looked up from our picnic table and said, “Look! There’s a deer.”  Most of us turned, but Rough & Tough ran out after it, it was no deer, but an Elk….a Bull Elk, whose antlers made it about 10 feet tall, and it walked right through our campground, about 25 yards away from where we were sitting!  The Park Ranger told our guys that it had been roaming our campground recently.  El Guapo was impressed as he & Liblitz are our resident Yellowstone experts, and they hadn’t seen a Bull Elk in two years.   Sorry, it was too dark for a picture…you’re going to have to take my word for it.

 

Day Seven

The night was cold.  We woke up and the temperature said 34 degrees outside.  The young couples & the dogs had slept in tents and I think they were warmer than the other 6 of us in the RV.  They prepped with layers, winter hats & professional camping sleep gear.  We were doing our best inside, probably not thinking we needed as much, but we were freezing inside the RV too.  Nona & Pop-pop woke up and noted that we needed to hit the Yellowstone General Store for much-needed warm tourist sweatshirts, jackets & blankets. 

You better believe we ran that generator at 8am for hot coffee, even though it was blowing exhaust right into the sitting area of our campsite.   After another hearty campsite breakfast, we set out to see the rest of Yellowstone.

We all 10 plus the two dogs got into the RV, and this was the first for that (El Guapo had driven his car from Buffalo for the last two days), and that was part of the adventure itself.  We literally took up every available seat and the dogs took up the whole floor.  But it was worth it to be together.  All available eyes were scanning for animals.  What’s that?  Oh, just a stump.  Is that a….never mind.  By lunchtime, we had passed Old Faithful and gone on to Mammoth Hot Springs, more than an hour of driving, not seeing anything.  We got to Mammoth, which was interesting to see just because it’s like a whole little town in Yellowstone, with buildings, homes, even a Justice Center.  Who knew?  And it was crowded.  We were looking for a place to eat lunch, or even just park, and then we saw the Elk.  A whole herd of them, literally hanging out, resting, in the median, right in the center of town.  There were two babies, and a young bull, both rare to see.   After, getting some cool pics, we pulled out a blanket and picnicked, right there with a herd of elk.  You don’t get to do that every day.

Finding the herd of elk broke our curse, b/c we were spotting animals all afternoon then.  We saw two single and a whole heard of bison.  Wish I’d had the video camera rolling b/c hearing the buffalo grunt that close up is pretty awesome.  We saw another bull elk, again with huge antlers, hanging out in the trees.  We saw a herd of elk swimming.  And, we saw what we thought was a herd of deer or antelope, until we zoomed in on the pics and realized they were mountain goats, which was something even El Guapo hadn’t seen on his visits.   But the best of all was how Liblitz had just been telling us about seeing a buffalo in the middle of the road, and guess what…as if on cue, we saw the brake lights ahead, and there was our buffalo walking along the road!!

Elk

3rd or 4th Buffalo of the day

Same buffalo after it crossed the road

Bull Elk

And of course, we saw all the water falls.  Tower Falls, Lower Falls & two views of the Upper Falls of the Yellowstone River, and the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone.  The views were unbelievable.  5 & 7 learned why the park was named Yellowstone.   I really could write several blogs about the beauty of what we saw, maybe I will in a few weeks.

But my favorite thing of the day (I’m sure others would pick other things, but hey, I’m the one writing the blog), were the Excelsior and Grand Prismatic geysers.   The colors created by all those minerals, and being completely surrounded on this huge plain by boiling hot water, and watching the water in that crater bubble and churn, was really beyond words to describe.  5 & I had quite the theological conversation about God’s creation seeing all that. 

The day ended again, with another great meal cooked over fire, roasted marshmallows, talking about the amazing things we’d seen.    And I just have to tell about something I’d never tried, but is a staple camping dessert for Liblitz.  Slice an unpeeled banana, and put inside marshmallows & chocolate.  Then wrap in foil and place in the fire.  When it’s done, you have this gooey, hot banana split style dessert that is delish! 

And after the kids went to bed, several of us walked the short hike through the woods down to the lake.  Now, I didn’t tell anyone ‘til the next day, but this city girl was terrified during that 8-minute walk, though when I did admit it, I found out that even Kiki (an avid camper and from Minnesota) was also terrified.  After having seen how big and how close the animals were all day, I could not think fast enough of what I’d do should we run into something.  It was actually pretty funny, the whole way through the dark woods, we all hooted, whistled, cawed and clapped, which Kiki & I could not stop laughing about, which also added noise.  Liblitz, who is our expedition member with real bear experience, told us this was to keep the bears away.  As she put it, you want the bear to figure out what you are from afar rather than you or it coming upon one another quietly.  I liked that plan better than the bear spray!   The view of the orange moon over a completely still lake, and seeing literally every star in the sky was totally worth it.