• Part 1: What Happened to Scott?
• Part 2: This is my {Bison} Jam

It’s daunting, writing after the fact about a long trip. Maybe next time I should bring my computer and blog in real time. I do take a few notes, so I remember what I can, but it’s hard to come back, have loads of work to catch up on, and also want to blog about my trip. That being said, it’s worth it, and the good news about this fall is that I’m not quite as busy as I have been in the past. (I remind myself this truly is good news, not bad news. I have plenty of work, it’s just not overwhelming me and making it so that I don’t have any time at all.)

Since getting home, I’ve been doing all the pampering things. I got my hair done today, and the other day I got a pedicure. There’s something about camp showering that just doesn’t make you feel as clean, and then, as the trip went on, showering happened less often—sometimes because the showers weren’t available, other times because, well, you get used to being a little dirty! At first we felt like we were too clean—showering every night at Canyon? Staying a cabin and having a shower available? I mean, and seriously, an air mattress topped with a foam pad? Were we even technically roughing it? But after three weeks of travel and living out of a car, I can say, yes, we were.

So we left off at the Roosevelt Arch.

Day 7, continued: We drove towards Bozeman, Montana, where we had located a Walmart to purchase the foam pad, and where we hoped to have lunch. We’d always heard Bozeman was a cute outdoors-y town, and my hiking shoes were made by a company founded there, so we wanted to stop by. We found a great place to eat called “Jam.” (insert this is my jam joke). It was a little bit of a wait, but well worth it! I had a beet and root vegetable hash with toast and homemade strawberry balsamic jam and it was downright delicious.

Super hipster, super delicious. I had an avocado on top even!

After our brunch, we hit the road for Glacier National Park. We had been on the interstate for some of the trip (speed limit 80 in places) but after a bit we were on more back roads, and the whole drive was quite beautiful (spoiler alert, nothing like future drives on the trip, but still beautiful).

We planned to enter the park on the west side, through West Glacier, as we were staying one night near the west side at Lake McDonald. We got to the park just before 6 pm as the visitor’s center was still open for a few minutes. Then we drove towards our lodging, and stopped to take a few pictures along the lake.

I’d booked us one night in Snyder Hall near Lake McDonald Lodge, which was a “dormitory” with a shared bathroom. It ended up being quite nice, as we didn’t even have to go outside to use the bathroom, haha!

We decided to eat dinner at the hotel’s dining room, which was called Russell’s Fireside Dining Room. There was a bit of a wait, but we were able to get drinks and walk around outside while we waited. The sun was starting to go down and it was very lovely to be lounging around in front of a grand hotel in the “parkitecture” (Park Architecture, this is an actual thing) style.

There was a boat dock from which one could buy sightseeing tour tickets or rent various boats.

The Lake McDonald Lodge from the boat dock.

Dinner was very nice, though perhaps not as good as the night before. I had a tofu dish, and we shared a vegan caesar salad. It was a nice salad, but didn’t taste like a caesar salad! The inside of the dining room was of a certain style, lots of wood, animal heads, etc.

This was the lobby, but the style was similar throughout.

After dinner, we walked around  a bit as we headed back to our lodging.

We made plans to get up quite early and try to beat the crowds. I didn’t sleep terribly well as our room was near the entrance to the Hall and people kept coming and going all night long and into the morning and each time they did the door slammed shut. Oh well. When we woke up, we decided to make a mad dash for Logan Pass to try to do a hike there. Logan Pass is the Visitor’s Center at the top of the Going to the Sun Road, which is a terrifying and beautiful drive through the heart of Glacier NP. The parking lot notoriously fills up early (they say between 8 and 8:30, but it was earlier the day we got there) and it caused me a lot of stress to think about trying to beat crowds and such. There were other ways to get there involving shuttles, but then you have to wait quite a lot, and as Americans, we love being near our car.

We rushed the drive up to Logan Pass, which meant we didn’t really appreciate the Going to the Sun Road on the West Side of the Park, but we found a spot in the lot! (I nearly had a heart attack when the sign said full, but we got one.) We had arrived around 7:45 am, and by the time we got out of our car around 8 am (we made lunch, had breakfast, etc) there were cars circling the lot.

We did a hike called Hidden Lake Viewpoint, which was about 3 miles round trip. I was feeling quite tired and had some trouble with the hike—the beginning had just tons of wooden stairs and was kind of a pain, but the views were very beautiful. I think that morning I was just feeling run down and groggy and in retrospect I wonder if we should have just rented a canoe and relaxed around the Lake for a bit instead. But nonetheless we had a good time!

It was a bit cooler that morning!

Louie wanted to continue to the lake itself, but I just didn’t have it in me that morning. I don’t know why I was dragging so much, but I was.

We saw a bunch of these squirrels. Wildlife always leads to people chatting, and we have learned over the years to never volunteer information because it’s either wrong or will be rudely corrected even if it’s right. We just smile and nod, and keep things to ourselves.

Then we decided to hike part of the Highline Trail. Some people do the Trail as a one way and take a shuttle back, but we thought we’d go about 2 miles to a certain point and then double back.

Almost right away we saw a few Mountain Goats! They were sitting up high on a cliff over the trail.

The views were amazing, and really expansive, and I started feeling very scared. The trail was narrow, not super narrow, but narrow enough that I started feeling weird, and then we got to a place where you held on with a chain, and it was a little windy, and I started freaking out. I got to the end of that part, and we took a break, and I thought I was okay, and then I just wasn’t. Louie was nice and we turned around and I made it back past the horrible chain part.

After that, before we finished the trail, we sat down on a few rocks to collect ourselves. We were enjoying the “cheeps” of the chipmunks and other small animals, when suddenly there was a loud galloping sound, and the two mountain goats ran past us on the trail. I think I screamed! I also think they were as startled to see us as we were to see them! We didn’t get a picture, but they ran RIGHT past us and then kept going on, probably to get away from us. It was a very neat experience! When we got to the trailhead, only a short distance away, we talked with a couple who saw the whole thing from a distance, and they were saying they tried to get our attention to warn us, ha!

Anyway, after that, we decided to continue down the road, and make stops along the way. We were staying at a KOA Campground in St Mary that night (and for 3 nights total) so we needed to be on the East Side of the Park by evening, so we needed to finish driving the Going to the Sun Road.

We made several more stops along the way. Some stops were too busy to find parking, but we managed to stop at Jackson Glacier to see it, and then parked and hiked to Sunrift Gorge, Sun Point and Bering Falls, a beautiful but easy hike.

We got a lot of compliments on the car, and saw a lot of other Subarus around. What else would one do with a new Subaru other than drive to see a bunch of National Parks??!

Anyway, we finally made it to the end of the road and found our KOA and checked in. I had decided to reserve at the KOA because many of the best campgrounds in the park were first-come, first-serve and we didn’t want that stress. We would likely stay in the park next time, but I wanted a place to do laundry before we left and it was nice to have shower access. We also didn’t have to stress quite as much about bears (we got more comfortable worrying about bears as the trip went on, especially in Canada where we were told the bears don’t break into cars like they do in the States) and we got to have hot water to wash our dishes and our hands! The last reason we stayed at the KOA is because it was actually a little closer to the Many Glacier area of the park where we were going the next day.

The campsite was TINY though, and the firepit oddly located near some bushes. We had a nice amount of privacy however, and it was a nice wooded area, far from RV’s.

We made dinner and relaxed.

Day 9: Grinnell Glacier Hike. We had tickets for a guided ranger hike to Grinnell Glacier from the boat dock at the Many Glacier Hotel. We needed to meet the boat at 8:30 am, but it was about 30 minutes away, or more, so we left around 7 to 7:15 am. I had a little panic attack (Glacier NP was stressing me out a bit more than I expected, due to crowds, internet posts about how busy things were, and I think, general tired-ness from being on the road) about where to go, but we found a ranger station, I asked, and then we doubled back to the hotel where we had originally almost parked, and parked there. It was fine. We got to the hotel before 8, so plenty of time, and then Louie realized he needed something back in the car and he doubled back while I went ahead to find the boat dock and get our tickets. They weren’t even open yet, but after they opened it was easy enough, and then we had some time to chill. (It’s worth noting I also tend to get stressed out in advance of long hikes, and this one I was worried I wouldn’t be able to keep up and/or I’d be too scared of heights to deal with it…so this was all a bit more stressful than I actually wanted to be on vacation, but oh well.)

We boarded the boat with no problem—the hike was with a group, but we had two short boat rides ahead of us first, which would save about 2 miles of hiking each way. The weather was absolutely beautiful.

 

You can see the Many Glacier Hotel in the background.

Our Ranger was named Dave, and we were going to be hiking up to Grinnell Glacier, about 8 miles round trip. The group was probably about 20 to 25 people. He was very informative and interesting, and talked about geology, wildlife, wildflowers, etc. We stopped every once in awhile to let people catch up and also for him to talk, and I mostly managed to keep up with the group. After a few hours we stopped for lunch, and after that was the steepest part of the hike. There were a few scary parts including a part where you had to sort of walk through or by a waterfall, but I managed and didn’t have any real heights trouble. We saw a few mountain goats from a distance at one point, and bunches of chipmunks and squirrels and such.

Then we made it to the Glacier! The lake in front of it was just so blue. It’s from various minerals that make it that color. The water was very cold as it’s from a melting glacier.

It’s important to note that there were probably hundreds of people around at this point. Or at least many dozens. We chatted with people along the way and met two people, Eric and Carla, (from Minnesota) who were actually staying just a few campsites down from us. We relaxed for a bit at the Glacier, and then headed back down to try to catch our boat back—we were guaranteed a ride at 4:30, and could get a ride later but might have to wait, or walk the 2 miles.

On the way back, we ran into people that had seen a bear—through various telephoto lenses we were able to see a grizzly bear in the distance. Louie took a lot of pictures of it from the distance, but then we needed to keep moving and realized the trail went closer to the bear than we’d like. A bunch of us were hiking closer together and tried to make a lot of noise—I guess we succeeded as we never did see the bear again. In any case, we did eventually make it back to the boat dock around 4 pm and caught a boat shortly after——they ended up doing an extra run because there were more people than usual, I guess.

Another view of the Many Glacier Hotel.

Then we left the Many Glacier area. I didn’t mention earlier but should have: there is about a 15 mile road into the Many Glacier area, and it is terrible! It’s riddled with potholes, and requires careful driving. But along the way back, we saw cars stopped and lo and behold, another bear! This one a black bear.

We got asked to move along though, as in Glacier they don’t like cars stopping to take pictures of bears. It seems that every park deals with wild animals slightly differently, and especially with bears. In Yellowstone you just aren’t supposed to block traffic. In Glacier (and later in Banff) they don’t want cars too close to bears because the bears get too used to cars. It makes sense, but we love looking at them and it seems pretty safe from the car. (Not as much outside the car…and you are supposed to leave 100 yards but who even knows how far that is?)

After we moved along from the first bear…another mile or so down the road we saw ANOTHER black bear. Crazy! I guess they really like the area. The grass was a bit tall to see them too well.

When you leave the official park area, you continue on the Many Glacier road for awhile. There are a lot of large free range cows along the way. I wonder how the bears and the cows interact (I assume they don’t hurt the cows often or that would be an issue?)

Then back to the campsite to shower, have dinner and relax before bedtime.

Day 10: We decided to do something less stressful and head to the Two Medicine Lake area for a hike. It’s an area further south  that they say gets less visitors so we thought it might be nice and quiet. We had to go through a construction area with a flagger to get there, so it was sort of annoying, but we enjoyed seeing a bunch of free range cows (you have to be careful as they are even in the road sometime) and the scenery was fantastic the whole way. We got to the Two Medicine area and the parking lot wasn’t even full and it was nearly 10 am!

You can see why the area is less popular, it obviously sucks.

We did a hike to Rockwell Falls which is about 6.6 miles round trip. Louie would (of course) have liked to go further to a lake, but I (again) didn’t have it in me, plus I wanted us to do laundry that night since we were leaving the next night. I was having a lot of trouble in Glacier being tired and a bit stressed out…we had a lot of conversations about vacation, and how relaxing it should be. This day in Two Medicine helped, and even though we didn’t hike as far as Louie wanted, I think it was a nice day.

People can rent boats and such here too. We never did, so maybe if we come back that will be part of the plan. We always end up hiking more and never renting boats!

Along the path we saw a female Moose! She was right on the path in front of Louie, so that was very exciting. I didn’t get a good picture of the moose. There was also a long wobbly bridge with a one person at a time limit. On the way back we ran into another group, and they said “That is the adventure we are looking for”.

If you look carefully you can see Louie on the top of the waterfall. He climbed up a “social trail” further than I dared, and he said there were even more waterfalls further up and back and it just kept going.

After a few hours, we made it back to the boat dock and the parking lot.

We stopped in a very nice gift shop that used to be the dining room for the chalets in the area. Two Medicine Valley was originally more popular and people stayed nearby in East Glacier, but then the Going to the Sun Road was built, and Two Medicine got less popular as everybody wanted to drive that road. I definitely recommend visiting the Two Medicine area as well, and the campground there wasn’t even full when we arrived at 10 am—we could have camped there if we weren’t set up in St Mary! Nonetheless, we had a little ice cream and then headed back, because we needed to do laundry. (I’d learned from past mistakes and really wanted to plan our laundry. This was sooner than half way through but I thought if we did this laundry, we could make it to the end, perhaps with a few hand washed items. It worked out!)

(The view while doing laundry…not too bad!)

We got back, showered, and did laundry, then dinner and hung out by the fire one more night. We made a really big fire to use up our firewood.

Day 11: We packed up our tent, but before we left Glacier, we wanted to do one more hike. We did one right near the East Entrance to the Park called Beaver Ponds. It was supposed to be around 3.5 miles, but we missed the turn and ended up hiking over 5 miles—easy miles due to not much elevation change, but still long! It was a nice hike, not many people around, and we saw a few deer by a pond.

Anyway, the hike was beautiful and a great farewell to Glacier National Park. It was pretty buggy, but we expected that by now. After we hiked we had a lunch in the car (sadly, I believe it was leftover PB sandwiches that we hadn’t eaten before, ha!)

That’s a good time to end this blog post—our next stop would be Waterton Park in Canada, and that’s where I’ll pick up next time!

I spent way too much time on this post. Probably 2-3 hours over time, more than one day!

I sometimes ponder if blogging is a selfish or stupid activity. Probably both, but I have said many times before, I enjoy reading my own blog entries later, especially of vacations, and so…I certainly hope you enjoy reading them, but I know I will! Maybe that’s selfish, but as one of the characters said to another on OITNB in an episode I watched last night, do what you think is best! (That’s not a direct quote, but I spend tooooooo much time worrying about how other people will react to things that I do and I should just do what I want, because that’s generally what people think I do anyway.)

So! The first installment is Part 1 and you should read that first if you are here.

Part 1: What Happened to Scott?

We left off entering Yellowstone National Park. I’d been to Yellowstone two times before—once with Louie a few years before and once as a young teenager back in the early 90’s. Both times were great, and especially the more recent time with Louie. We were SOOOO excited to get back for a few more days—I’d booked three nights at Canyon Campground and one night in a cabin at Mammoth Hot Springs, so we would have plenty of time to delve into exploring and hiking. Of course, once you start looking at all the things one can do, 4 nights doesn’t seem like enough…no matter how much time one spends at these national parks, there can often be more time to spend!

We entered Yellowstone via the Northwest entrance through Silver Gate, and within a few minutes, we were in Lamar Valley, surrounded by bison.

This was my first bison photo.

I wanted to take a brush to this one to help shed its fur!

We were seriously in our happy zone. Louie and I hopped out of the car when we could, snapping pictures and just walking around with wonder and awe. Yellowstone is a place that really has it all: wildlife, gorgeous scenery, and of course, weird hot springs. Lamar Valley isn’t a hot springs area, but wildlife and mountains and water and open valleys and wildlife are plentiful. We slowly made our way forward, stopping over and over to take pictures, until I realized, my goodness, we’d better get a move on if we want to get our campsite set up by dark!

I brought this silly stuffed bison along, thinking I’d use it for a variety of funny photos. This was literally the only one I took.

We stopped at Tower Falls for a quick look at the Yellowstone River. We’d done all of the Yellowstone major stops before, but it’s been a few years! One thing I added for this year was I downloaded an app called “GYPsy Guide” which works with your GPS to tell you interesting information about various  locations and makes suggestions on where and when to stop places. Yellowstone is HUGE and around every corner there are things to see and do, and it’s sometimes overwhelming.

(Personally I’m just happy watching and listening to the bison. They make these grunts and snorting sounds that are just so fun.)

Anyway, we slowly made our way to Canyon Campground, our home for the next three nights. Check-in went quite smoothly, except evidently I’d said only one adult instead of two, but it was no problem. We got the usual talk about bear safety, and our site had a bear box. They also said to leave food and such in your car if the bear box (a large metal box that bears can’t get into) wasn’t available.

Our site was great—far enough from other sites, yet quite close to the bathroom and water source. A little bit of  trek from the dishwashing area (you are only allowed to wash dishes in a certain room because the scent of food and food scraps would attract the bears) but that’s only once or twice a day. The first two nights our campsite area was very quiet—the third night there were some different people and some were quite loud into the night which was annoying, but at least it was only one night. I’m a fan of quiet camping, where basically all the noise you make doesn’t travel past your own campsite. I shouldn’t hear your conversation and you shouldn’t hear mine. The reason to camp in a National Park is to enjoy nature, which means being quiet enough to do so. That’s my soapbox lecture!

New to us for camping this year was an inflatable air mattress. We’d been using thermarests which are a mixture of foam and air in a small portable mat. This year we bought a small full size air mattress that came with a rechargeable pump. We thought the air might get cold, but thought that the sleeping bag would help with that. Well…Yellowstone was pretty cold—we realized later that our first night there might have been a low of perhaps 38 degrees! The cold was coming from UNDERNEATH us, the air mattress, and there was little we could do…we were wearing numerous pairs of pants, tops, wool socks, etc, but it was pretty chilly the first night, and somewhat chilly the following two nights. Not to spoil, but after leaving Yellowstone we stopped at a Wal-Mart (ugh) and bought a foam mattress pad, kind of an egg crate type thing to put on top of the air mattress and WHEW it was amazing and kept us warm and comfortable. I don’t think it ever got as cold as that first night in Yellowstone again on the trip, but it was down into the 40’s several more times.

One view of our tent.

And another. I liked Canyon Campground. We also got two showers each day per campsite at the shower house. There are plenty of services nearby as well. Downside of the campground, only cold water (this is typical in US National Park campground). Upside, fairly clean facilities, good dishwashing area, lots of bear boxes, good fire pits.

On our first night, we were excited to make dinner and a fire. One thing Louie and I really enjoy is relaxing in front of a fire in the evening, so we always buy firewood.

Day 4: We decided to do a short sized hike which started from a trailhead at the Yellowstone Picnic Area for our first hike. It was about 3.7 miles and was supposed to have few nice views. We opted to do it as a loop rather than an out-and-back and I’m not sure I would do that again as the ending part was super annoying. But the trail was great—great views, and we saw several marmots and bighorn sheep. We only saw one other party hiking this trail while we were. By the way, we had a can of bear spray with us on every hike, and we always try to carry several liters of water each, snacks and/or lunch, rain gear, layers in case it gets cold, lights, first aid kit, extra socks, tissues, and a few other random things. Always hike prepared! (Oh, and a map!)

(As usual, most of the pictures of Louie are here on my camera, and most of the pictures of me are on Louie’s camera, and he hasn’t uploaded his pictures yet because his work schedule this week is insane.)

We had some lovely views of the Yellowstone River along the route.

Do you see the marmot?

How about now?

After the hike, since we were at a picnic area, we had a little picnic.

Then we headed to Trout Lake, which was a little ways down the road. We had to go back through Lamar Valley to get there, so there were more bison to look at. Trout Lake is a 1.2 mile loop hike. The start was very steep, but once you got to the lake it was easy, but there were tons of mosquitoes.

People said they saw foxes,  but we didn’t. It was a beautiful little lake, one of those places in Yellowstone that should be busy but wasn’t too bad.

Then we headed back toward the middle loop of the park. We took a side trip up a little gravel road called Chittenden Road which overlooks the start of a trail to Mt. Washburn.

We drove through a bit of Hayden Valley to go visit the Mud Volcano area. We headed there to see some thermal features, but also because on our previous visit we’d always seen bison there and loved the look of the bison frolicking with steam and thermal features near them. We didn’t see any this time, but still enjoyed seeing the springs.

Then we headed back to the campground to shower, make dinner, and rest.

Day 5: We got up early to hike Mt. Washburn. We left from the Dunraven Pass trailhead rather than the Chittenden Road one, and got there before 8 am to make sure of a parking spot and to get a good start on the hike. At first, there were only a few other groups hiking, but as the morning progressed it got quite busy. The whole hike was 6.2 miles and wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The views along the way were absolutely spectacular, and it was full of wildflowers. We really enjoyed this hike. The downside was that the whole trip was doubletrack, an old road, and when we got to the top there were actually workers who had driven up the other trail to get to work, which makes you feel like, well, why did I hike if they drove? The top is a lookout/fire tower, and there is actually somebody who stays there all the time to watch for fires!

My photos don’t do the view justice, but in this one you can see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. The views were of the whole park, the Canyon, Lake Yellowstone, and you can see various thermal features in the distance with steam rising from them.

This was the tower, and the trucks that some workers drove up. To be fair, I wouldn’t have wanted to drive up the road either, so I guess it was better hiking! The tower had a room with some displays, bathrooms (of a sort), and a viewing platform. It also contained an apartment that you couldn’t go in. We had our lunch at the top.

Proof that we made it! We did a lot of “trading photos” with people, though we were always happy to just take photos without trading, but usually we took advantage and got the photo also.

We enjoy taking selfies too though!

Gorgeous views!

We saw a few bighorn sheep, and then we had a very close encounter with one (we did back up, but we didn’t want to run away, so we just tried to stay still and not frighten it), and then we saw a bunch!

Going down the hike was easier than up, but it was hotter on the way down. We made it though!

Next we headed back to Hayden Valley and wanted to do a short trail called the Storm Point Nature Trail. We had a tricky time at first because of construction through the area…there was a flagger with a one road way and we had to wait and then couldn’t find the trailhead…we drove further, saw some more amazing views and some viewpoints we’d never seen, had a somewhat harrowing experience of what I called “stealth peeing”, and then finally found what we thought was the trail and thoroughly enjoying it…even making it all the way through not being 100 percent sure we were on the right trail, meeting a woman with two kids asking if this was the trail, telling her, probably, but either way it was great! and then finally noticing the trail sign, which had fallen over and was laying facedown in the dirt.

A good old fashioned bison jam. Why yes, I took that picture out of the sunroof.

Lake Yellowstone, along our hike I believe.

After that, we headed back, showers, etc.

Day 6: We woke up early to head to see the Grand Canyon North Rim. On our last visit we’d done a really great hike on the South Rim so we thought we’d do a quick visit to the North Rim. We got to the parking lot quite early, before 8 am, and the crowds were minimal. We walked down a very steep trail to the bottom of the falls.

The canyon is really amazing. We were also able to see Uncle Tom’s Trail from our viewpoint, which is this terrifying trail with 328 steps on the south rim (closed for construction this year) which I never want to hike again.

We got back to the top and then wandered to a few more viewpoints. Louie decided to hike down another trail but I stayed above and just looked from there.

Finally we left to go pack up our tent.

Our next step would be the Norris Geyser Basin. We got there just before noon and as expected, it was crowded. We parked outside of the parking lot on the street and walked for 10 to 15 minutes to get there.

We’d been to Norris before as well, but Louie wanted to see it again because he remembered loving it so much. I was happy to oblige.

What I always find most interesting is how there will be an area where no plants grow, but then they do. Life continues, no matter how difficult it is!

Look at those grasses!

It just looks like a post-apocalyptic scene. Or a war zone. But it’s natural. (Remember, even natural things can be bad.)

After Norris, we headed north towards Mammoth. I’d booked a cabin (with no private bathroom) for us to stay our last night for two reasons: 1) It’s closer to the north exit thus saving us at least an hour drive in the morning as we head north to Glacier 2) We’d seen cabins before and Louie remarked that someday when we were older and richer we should come back and stay in one. We aren’t much richer, or much older, but they weren’t too expensive for one night!

Mammoth Hot Springs. This place is crazy too.

Here we had a bit of parking snafu, which involved getting what was actually an awesome parking space and then panicking. But it worked out, and we were also thrilled to realize at one point that we had good internet, plus, it looked like it was going to storm, so we spent a few minutes in our car catching up on emails and checking voicemails and such. Then we headed out to explore the “terraces.” Here the springs make these weird terraces. Some of the springs flow every year, and then they will abruptly stop, so you’ll see a lot of old springs which just look like ugly rocks now, that used to be live! There’s a whole loop road where only a few of the springs are still running and the rest are dormant, and it’s sort of funny to see.

Speaking of wastelands…

You can see how the boardwalks are being taken over by the hot springs. Soon the park service will have to rebuild!

I believe this was called Canary Spring and it is utterly gorgeous. I couldn’t take enough pictures of it, especially with the dark stormy skies as contrast.

Here’s one of the more dormant areas I was talking about above.

Do you see a face?

We checked into our cabin then, and it was super cute.

They had soap in the shape of bears. I thought we took this with us but I don’t know what happened to it.

Little ground squirrels digging holes or something. I took a fall off the steps later than night on my way to the bathroom (bathrooms were around the corner a bit, though the cabin had a sink so that was great)…I hit the floor completely and was shocked, but not hurt—luckily I fell into the grass.

We cleaned up and put on jeans and t-shirts rather than hiking gear, and then walked over to see a few more springs before deciding to eat dinner at the Mammoth Dining Room. This was our first dinner out in a few nights, so it was a welcome relief to not cook over the little stove! I enjoyed a nice piece of trout, and we had a lovely evening. After dinner we walked around a bit more and saw a ton of elk just hanging around the town.

I slept great in a real bed (yay!) and not being cold (remember, this was BEFORE the foam pad, so we were still pretty cold each night) and would highly recommend the cabins. The only downside is that Mammoth isn’t particularly convenient of a location to anything except Mammoth, so I wouldn’t stay there too many nights. I want to go back in the winter sometime though, as it’s a part of the park that is open in winter.

Day 7: We woke up and had breakfast at the Terrace Grill, which is a fast food place. Breakfast sandwiches, coffee, more elk (well, not to eat but to watch) and then we hit the road for Glacier.  We went out the North Entrance (exit) and stopped to get pictures with the Roosevelt Arch on our way.

Goodbye Yellowstone! Next stop: Glacier National Park.

To be continued…