Travel Blog

I apologize for taking a week off from blogging, but I was busy rubbing elbows with celebrities. More on that later.

Last week, Phil and I went for a hike up to Taggart and Bradley lakes. We started fairly early in the morning and had the trail to ourselves. We knew we were in for a good hike right from the start when we saw this:

We love waterfalls, even if they're little ones. The hiking was pretty easy, with only a mild upgrade, and great views of the mountains on the way.

And then we got to Taggart Lake.

Phil and I hung out here for awhile, soaking up the scenery and relaxing in the solitude. I found this great lounge chair for us, but I hogged it while Phil took my picture, and then I let him sit there too.

Then it was time to head back to the car. We were walking along, minding our own business, when I heard something charging me from behind. I whirled around, quite startled, and saw terrifying figure running straight at me. Some woman was actually running the trail! I just don't understand those creatures. She told me not to worry - a bear would have made more noise than she did. Ha ha. Thanks a lot for the heart attack, crazy lady with 6-pack abs. Who asked you? Go eat a power bar or something.

After I managed to breathe normally again, Phil and I continued our hike, and passed this neat duo.

Towards the end of the trail, we were greeted by a flurry of other hikers just getting started. I guess it pays to start earlier in the day. As we approched our starting point, and moved over to make way for other folks, Phil pointed out a snake slithering across the trail right ahead of us. I waited for the other hikers to pass so they wouldn't scare it away before I got a closer look, and I was able to get right up on it. Unfortunately, my pictures of it stink, so I'm not going to show any here. But I will share a snake picture with you that Phil took of me at his workplace.

Disregard my bushy hair, please. I got it under control later in the day after I saw these pictures. But on Mondays, a couple of volunteers bring skulls of various animals and some snakes to the Elk Refuge so the public and look and learn. I came early and got a one-on-one encounter with two of their snakes. This one in the picture was a garter snake, which was the same kind of snake Phil and I saw out on the trail. I also held a bigger snake, but I forget what kind it was. It looped around me pretty good, though, and I guess it got a strange gleam in its eye because its handler said, "You'd better hand her over to me now...she's getting pretty interested in you." Seems she was a day away from feeding day, and I must have been looking pretty tasty or something. They usually have a King snake with them, too, but it was at home with a case of the sheds, so it was too cranky to come. The guy said to come back this week and I'd get to meet the big guy.

Later that day, when I was at my workplace, I got to meet Shelton Johnson. He's a Ranger at Yosemite National Park, and he was featured in the Ken Burn's documentary, "National Parks: America's Best Idea." I had actually seen a segment of that documentary not too long ago that featured Yellowstone National Park, and it was excellent. And I remembered this guy, Shelton, from it. I was wondering why a Ranger from Yosemite was featured in the Yellowstone portion of the documentary, but it turns out that Yellowstone was Shelton's first gig. He was super nice, and a good storyteller. He was at the Discovery Center to do a book signing for his book Gloryland. Our boss was nice enough to let us go hear him speak a bit before the book signing.

And after the signing, he agreed to have his picture taken with yours truly.

That's about all the excitement for this week, except to say that our website readers, Tara and Steve, stopped by to see Phil and me this past weekend, and it was really great to see them again. They came to visit us at our very first workamping job in Yellowstone in 2006. How cool is that?

Last day off, Phil and I went to Colter Bay (about 30 miles from where I work) to take a hike. I picked this particular place and hike because we are out of shape and the booklet said this was an easy 3-mile hike around marshes and ponds, where we could maybe see some cool birds and maybe a beaver or two. Colter Bay is quite lovely, and we had a good time. The only problem was I listened to Phil and instead of doing the 3-mile loop, we ended up hiking about 9 miles all said and done. But it was a nice day (it started raining only when we were safely back in the truck) and the hiking was non strenuous. The only oopsy all day was when we were passing another hiker and he told us to be careful because he heard some crashing sounds in the woods, and whatever was making the noise sounded fairly large. We said, "No problem, we have our bear spray." We looked down to Phil's beltloop, which happened to be bear-spray-less. We dropped it somewhere and didn't even notice. I'm thinking the bear sneaked up behind Phil at some point and picked his pocket, but that's only a theory.

We didn't get to see any beavers (or bears) that day, but we saw a big white bird, a weird blue bird, lots of dragonflies, and a butterfly. We thought that was a pretty good wildlife tally.

In other news, we've been running into moose everywhere. Most of them are right in our own backyard. This cutie was just standing outside our back window the other morning, but when she heard me coming with the camera, she decided to moosy away. Ha ha. She stopped for a bit to play with the clothesline though.

And then she scared the heck out of our neighbor who was just coming around his RV to get into his van when I took this picture.

Then on our way home that evening, Phil said to pull over, pull over, so I did a u-ey and we got to see two bull moose in the bushes, just munching and hanging out.

And then just this morning, Phil comes and wakes me up asking if I wanted to see a girl and boy moose right outside our neighbor's rig. I'll get up for some moose any day.

We enjoyed their company until the construction crew started working and scared them off.

That's about all that's going on here for now. We're doing our town stuff today (shopping, blogging, sending out resumes, etc) and we're going to have our active day tomorrow. We're hoping to get our dollar rafting trip still. They were all full up last week. But as the season winds up, we think we should have a good chance soon.

Now with two days off in a row, Phil and I are able to get out and enjoy ourselves a bit more than we have been used to. Last week after getting our library cards and doing some food shopping, we decided to take some roads less traveled. We took a right out of our RV park and drove past the town of Kelly and onto a back road that leads to my workplace. On the way, we saw this little homestead that we have seen on books and postcards in our stores. I forget the name of the place, which is terrible of me, but hope you will forgive me. We'll make it a contest...name this place:

A coworker had told me I should ride my bike to work on this road, but I'm thinking no. It was up and down and windy, whereas the road I take to work (and yep, I'm actually doing some physical exercise here) is nice and flat and straight. The only problem with my road is it's the main drag and the traffic is kinda heavy all the time, but I wear my little reflective vest my sis gave to me years ago, and I have my brain bowl on my head. Of course, I don't think either will help me much if a buffalo-seeking, RV driving (swerving) tourist hits me, but you can't live in fear, right? (Sorry moms...don't worry too much about me...it's all good.)

After we ended up near my workplace, we decided to take a picture of it before we tried to get our post office box.

It's called the Craig Thomas Discovery Center and it is a relatively new building. It will be three year's old this month. The ugly green skirting you see in the front is where they're in the process of building a big auditorium. That will be cool.

After we were done here, Phil took us on the Moose-Wilson road, which is a little, narrow, gravel road with lots of looky-loos. And they were looking for moose, of course. It was kind of hard to squeeze ourselves by the folks pulled off on either side of the road, but we squeaked by, and there was indeed a moose there. We didn't get any pictures of it, though, because there was no place for us to park, and we refuse to be those folks who just stop in the middle of the road.

When we could pull off, we walked around a little bit in hopes of seeing more moose, but no such luck. I did get bitten by a lot of mosquitoes, however, so we did get to see some wildlife at least.

On the way home from work the other day, the sky got dark and gloomy and we knew we were in for a light show. We got to see some good lightning strikes before the sun came back out, and then we got to see the biggest rainbow we had ever seen. Phil got a picture of a piece of it. I think  we would have needed a very wide-angled lens to get all of it.

The weather is really neat around here. You can see it raining in the distance, but it's crystal clear where you are. Once second it will be a downpour, and you wait two minutes, and it's nice and sunny again. I really like it. We've got to watch some great lightning strikes almost nightly, but it never lasts for long.

And then, on our way to work just the other morning, it finally happened...I got to see a moose close up!

She was walking around our campground. I took lots of pictures, but hardly any of them came out all that great. Figures. But I did snag a couple of good ones, and I've been told the moose will be back in our campground in force in about a month.

That's about it for now. It's our day off today, and we're sitting in the library catching up on internet stuff and getting stocked up on reading materials. It had been so long, I blew through three books in a week! Tomorrow is our get-out-and-do-stuff day, so we're going to try to go white-water rafting for $1. I'll let you know how we make out.

Phil and I are all settled in here now. We even have our post office box in Moose, Wyoming. And I got to see a moose the other morning as we were heading into work. I do have pictures, but as per usual, I left my cord at home, so those will just have to wait.

Our jobs are good. Nothing we're not used to. It's quite a bit like it was at Yellowstone, with a lot of the same merchandise and whatnot. The big difference here is that memberships to the Association are not pushed like they are at Yellowstone. If you go to Yellowstone's Visitor Center's bookstores, you will be asked if you would like to become a member of the Yellowstone Association. Here, we don't really ask too often. We have signage around the store, and our bags tell you about the benefits, but as a salesperson, I am not under any obligation to ask you if you want to join. But since I'm used to asking people, I do so every now and then, and my membership numbers are pretty high so far. Phil's doing well too. We just have to put up with some strange looks from our coworkers because we ask folks. It's kinda funny.

My store is really nice, and I love the view. I'm looking right out onto the mountains every day. Can't beat it. Phil is liking where he's at too because there's a lot going on all the time, and he likes that. I'm trying to learn about the park, but it's slow going. I had a lady ask me the other day what Teton meant, and I said I had no idea, it was probably Native American for something. WRONG! I found out that Grand Teton is "big tit" in French. Oh well.

Some friends of ours who started at Yellowstone with us in 2006, and who are still coming back there yearly, came down to visit us on Thursday evening. We got to catch up and drink and have some laughs. It was a really good evening. Cherie is now a district manager for the Yellowstone Association, and she wants us to meet the hiring manager for the stores there, so she's setting something up for us very soon. It's nice to have options. Plus, it's an exciting time for them because the new Visitor Center is slated to open this month on the 25th. If you've been with us from the start of our adventures, you may remember we moved YA out of the old place and into a temporary bookstore. Now it's time to move from that temporary hut (which is falling down around their ears because it wasn't meant to be in use so long) into the new place. Cliff and Cherie asked us if we were coming to help with the move, but I think we'll pass on that one.

That's about it for now. We're enjoying ourselves and our environment, and Phil's ulcer is shrinking every day.