Day 22: Winter Wonderland [Yellowstone (Part II) to Gillette, Wyoming]

On the open prairie, there are few things for a amigo to do but sit and mull things over. To ponder the big questions and to figger out where the next watering hole might be, relying only on himself and his trusty steed, alone in that wide expanse. This is the kind of country we encountered in Yellowstone. It's country that tests an amigo: bear country, you see. We came here to wrassle bears, and that's just what we'll do. The hunt is on to find a big ol' grizzley.

The sky was clear (our tents a little damp from dew) when we awoke this morning. Our bison friend that was sleeping under a tree about 200 yards away when we went to bed had already awoken and moved on, so we followed her lead. Today was our opportunity to get a closer look at the vast (2.1 million acre!) Yellowstone Park. Hiking was at the top of our priority list. Wrassling was on top of the top of the list.

First, however, we stopped by the Fishing Bridge visitor center to attend a ranger talk about bear safety.  (We didn't want to hurt nature when wrassling it, you see.) This doubled as a good idea for our hike and a way to complete our specifications to get our Junior Park Ranger badges. Ranger Patrick provided us a wonderfully informative talk and issued us our well-earned badges. Fun fact: we actually learned a lot by filling out the packet and correctly identified a number of different critters on our hike. But a critter ain't a bear. We don't wrassle the little stuff.

From the lengthy list of day hikes available at the visitor center, we arrived at the decision to embark on the most strenuous of our options: the hike up to Mount Washburn, which promised great views of the park and crossed straight through bear country.
And boy, did it! The parking lot gave us a taste of the chilling, howling wind, but the bear warning sign at the trailhead raised our spirits and we quickly warmed up on the trail. The trail itself was lined with snow, enough to make us hike on top of 3 ft. piles of snow at some points. We also saw at least three marmots, two types of squirrels, and chipmunks. The top of the mountain gave us gorgeous panoramic views of the whole park, including Yellowstone Lake, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, and Grand Teton peak 75 miles away. The wind was again howling at 10, 243 feet, but there was a pleasant indoor observation room that had displays about what we were seeing. This was the bottom floor of a ranger residence, which serves as a fire lookout that is in use about June-October. About every two weeks provisions are hiked up to the isolated ranger in residence, who spends the entire season there. We all recognized, though, what the lone Ranger up there was doing: he was waiting to wrassle bears. Taking a page out of the Ranger handbook, with which we were so familiar, we waited there on the mountain top for a grizzley to accept our open challenge. The bears wussed out. No wrassling today. But the views were spectacular, and we were happy to hike back down to the warmth of our Silver Swede.

On our way out of the park we came across a moose and her baby! They were rather shy, munching on greens behind some trees across a river, but we a good peak at them anyway. It was a first for both LT2 and The Ocho! What a great farewell to the park...

I (The Ocho) awoke to a very snowy and pristine landscape. I was informed we were in Wyoming and driving up the Beartooth Pass. The temperature had dropped to a chilly 40 degrees and the terrain had switched to a wintry-looking wonderland of thawing lakes. We took a break at the summit, a lofty 10,947 feet above sea level. The descent on the Montana side was just as dramatic and the whole pass reminded The Ocho of mountainous lakes similar to those on backpacking trips with her family in the Southern Sierras. Absolutely gorgeous!

After enough switchbacks to make you sick, we soon hit I-90 and were flying east once more. We chose to rest our heads in Gillette, WY for a while before we hit Mount Rushmore and the Badlands tomorrow.

We are camping in the Badlands so here begins another short stint of radio silence. Hope this onslaught of belated posts satiates you until then. In the meantime, keep your eyes peeled on Sportscenter for clips of The Captain wrassling a grizzley. He spotted one on a bear warning sign the other day and is convinced that we will encounter him tomorrow in the Badlands. ESPN said they were interested in the story, now that the NBA Finals suck so bad. Finally, dear readers, this could be the Amigos' big break.

Hasta luego,

Los Amigos