Saturday, August 14, 2010

Day Seventy-four - The End:

Day Seventy-four – The End:

We leave Yellowstone tomorrow! These last couple of weeks have gone by very quickly. We packed in a bunch of stuff and have made the most of this trip. I won’t go into detail of the last weeks, otherwise this post will be too long, but I will sum it up.

To start with a Friday (a couple weeks ago??), we drove to Cody after work to see a movie. We also had an amazing BBQ dinner. Josh hasn’t stopped talking about it. The next day (after sleeping in until after 12), we hiked to Fairy Falls and Mystic Falls. Both short hikes, but beautiful. Fairy Falls comes off a very high cliff near the Grand Prismatic. Mystic Falls was a short waterfall, but full of more water. On that one we were able to climb off trail and go up close to the falls. I liked that one a lot.

The next day was a bad day, I don’t think I will elaborate on it. Ultimately we couldn’t agree on which hike to do and then when we pick one out we went on the wrong trailhead and didn’t get to the petrified trees that we were trying to see. I’ll leave that as it is. J During that week I don’t think we did anything really. We hung out with some friends and played cards.

The next weekend (last weekend), we went on a long hike to Seven Mile Hole. This trail took us down into the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone right up to the Yellowstone River. We went with some of our friends from Taiwan. They were fun to hike with. The river was really cool. In that section of it, it flows very fast and the current is strong. It looked inviting to swim in, but we would be down stream very quickly. There was a neat thermal area that we hiked through on our way. It looked like a very old area because many of the features were dried up. The canyon area is so pretty. The colors on the sides of the canyon are just amazing. Coming back up the canyon was hard. I stopped a lot to catch my breath. I did not get in very good shape this summer like I wanted! We survived the hike, though and it was well worth it. There was a really cool Glacial Boulder by the trail head too. It was pushed there and left by a glacier from long ago.

Our next day was another long hike. Josh and I went to hike a trail that runs along Lewis Lake and up a channel that connects it to Shoshone Lake. The trail along the channel was absolutely beautiful. Josh says it is his favorite. The trail runs high along the water and we could see down into it. The water was crystal clear and amazingly beautiful. It was a calm river and there were many wildflowers along the trail and big trees. We stopped at Shoshone Lake for lunch and then continued on another trail to make a loop. The second half wasn’t as pretty. The scenery was monotonous; a lot of the young trees that started growing after the 1988 fire. The first part of the trail was well worth it. I really loved it too.

My birthday was the next day. I had to work in the morning (boo!) but we made it a great day. I wanted to go out on a rowboat, so we headed to the marina to try it out. There were some clouds looming, but I was hoping they would blow over. Of course they did not! The wind picked up and the rain started pounding. Josh worked really hard to get us back to the dock. He started to get upset and I tried to not make eye contact and held on. We did make it though and now we laugh about it. I don’t know that I will need to experience a rowboat again.

Josh took me to dinner at the Old Faithful Inn. That was the best dinner I think I’ve ever eaten. It was overpriced for sure, but it was amazing. When we got back to Lake, we hung out with some friends in the Lodge and had a good time. I had a really fun day.

Since then we have been hanging out with friends. Now I’ve almost finished packing all our stuff and am ready to get on the road. I will probably be about a week before we get home. There are some places we want to stop at on our drive. So the adventures are not quite over!

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