Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Firehole Meadows








OD2...

My first backcountry camping experience in Yellowstone was a complete success! The hike in was beautiful, we stopped and ate lunch beside a geyser that erupted every 30 seconds or so; it was way better than old faithful! The first 10 miles was mainly up hill, so I got plenty of great pictures of the surrounding area. We saw both water falls (Mystic and Fairy) and between them we only saw 4 other people who were heading to the campsite that was beyond ours.

Our site was beautiful; right on the side of Firehole Meadows were we could see the sunset. We roasted marshmallows, ate our dinners, and goofed off around the camp fire. The night got cold….below freezing cold; I really wish I would have brought my cold weather gear along with me! By morning I couldn’t feel my feet, but we packed up early and headed around our loop. The sun warmed me up right away and we were back to my truck by 11 o’clock (the 10 mile hike took us 4 hours). So over all, we hiked 16 miles in 6 hours…not too shabby!

Anyways enough text, pictures say a thousand words!







P.S. for those of you who are watching the weather for my location….IT’S GOING TO BE 80 DEGREES BY THE END OF THE WEEK!!!!
















Sunday, June 17, 2007

CAMPING!

Hello June 17th….and hello snow. That’s right, it’s snowing again. Love it. Anyways, Jacob, Chuck and I are going camping tomorrow night, we’re going to leave in the morning and hike about 10 miles to our campsite in Firehole Meadows then the next day we’ll hike about 6 miles back to the road to the other vehicle. I’m so excited, it should be awesome. We’ll be hiking past fairy falls, a 197 ft waterfall which is one of the biggest in the park. Once we’re in firehole (behind the upper geyser basin of old faithful) we’ll be able to swim in the thermal water if we’d like to. The entire trip should be a nice 16 mile loop. I’ll be sure to post some pictures when I get back. If you look on the map we're doing the fairy creek loop....

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Work and play

Work and play....

Finally relief is going to come from our crazy work schedules, we have some returning servers arriving next week and we will be fully staffed. I don't mind working long days but after 5 of them in a row it's time to lay around. I haven't gone hiking in a week or so, the weather has returned to cold and wet. My days off lately have been spent just laying around or sleeping the entire day away. It's nice to rest up when the weather is bad. Next week I have a relatively easy schedule, only 2 double shifts thank goodness.



Molly and I went for a drive today and saw a wolf and a great gray owl. They were amazing and quite close to us. The wolf was hunting a ground squirrel and the owl was just perched out in the open; neither cared about all the people around them. Ironically I ran into three people from Waupaca (Isaac Orr, Nathan Millison, Patrick Robins) while we were watching the wolf....


The food here is finally getting to me, I am definitely sick of it. Everything tastes the same...bad. Lately Molly and I have been hitting up the deli for dinner so that we actually have a hearty meal in us.

Sorry there isn't anything more exciting, but here are some pictures from our drive today.



(Get well soon brother! Love you!)