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Jul. 19th, 2004 08:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccastareyesHoly shit! I'm nearly 400 posts out of it. Wow...
Anyways, here's my trip report.
Wednesday
We got up at an ungodly hour of the morning... okay, it was 7 AM, but any time before 9 is too early in my book. We managed to get everythig packed, and left 15 minutes late. We drove. We drove a lot. Any idea how big Wyoming is? Or that Laramie/Cheyenne and Grand Teton/Yellowstone are on the oppostie corners of the state? I slept... I should have worked on my writing.
Anyways, we got to Grand Teton about mid-afternoon, and pitched tents. We wandered around for a bit, and decided to go canoeing at Colter Bay. However, the canoe docks were dried up, and we were informed that we wanted to go to Signal Mountain. We decided against this and went to Jenny Lake for swimming. The water was cold, and there were rocks.
After dinner, it started to rain -- thankfully it was bedtime.
Thursday
The tent did not leak. Hooray! We also got a pretty view of the clouds over the mountains. After breakfast, a bear decided to wander through camp -- thankfully we had cleaned up the food, and were standing by the cars.
This day, we went on a hike up Signal Mountain. I have mixed feeligns about hikes up mountains... on the one hand, going up them sucks. On the other, it's better to be going down when you are tired from a hike. Plus the view was awesome. After that, we went canoeing, and I learned how to manage one from Kim-roommate, who was a Girl Scout. If my Girl Scout troop had done more traditional things like canoeing and such, I might have stayed in it. After that, we went swimming in Jackson Lake -- whihc was just as cold and rocky as Jenny Lake, but closer to the campsite.
Dinner was delayed by a storm and bear warning -- no actual bear (or much of a storm) this time.
Friday
Another bear today! This time, I had to make a mad dash to grab my toiletries bag from the picnic table -- bears don't know that just because something smells like coconut or mint, does not make it edible. We broke camp and moved to Yellowstone. Good Lord, there are a lot of geysers there. And it's big -- it took about an hour for us to drive from the entrance to our campsite.
We went to the West Thumb Geyser basin (which is a pretty small one, with no real active geysers, but it was close to camp) and to see Old Faithful. We of course timed it so we arrived just as the thign went off, so we had to wait an hour to catch it again. It was here I noticed my hair was getting kind of icky -- no showers in the campsite, so I was relying on rinsing in lake water (TMI, I know) -- and I had sunburned my scalp -- the only part of my body not regularly covered in clothing or sunscreen. I promptly borrowed a hat from Caroline (our grad student coordinator's roommate). We saw many elk along the road.
We went swimming in Firehole River, which was both partially fed by hotsprings (read: warmer) and had a mud bottom. There were rapids just upstream from the swimming hole, so people would swim up the current until it got too strong, pull themselves along the rocks the rest of the way, then let the current carry them back. It was fun and a good workout.
This was the only night there was no risk of rain or clouds. My God, the stars were beautiful.
Saturday
No bear today. Instead Kim-roommate and I had to wait 15 minutes for a bison, who had decided that 3 feet from our tent was a good spot for breakfast, to turn away so we wouldn't spook him. There were also mule deer at the campsite.
Today we went to Mount Washburn, another uphill hile with a good view. On the wya back it started to rain, and we passed a few of the male students huddled under a tree -- the only tree for a good 500 fet on a mountainside. We also saw a boatload of more hyrdrothermal features, which I was too tired to appriciate. And a moose and our third bear -- this one from a safe distance. Still no grizzlies.
We skipped swimming, which was a shame as I felt in need of a rinse.
Sunday
We saw yet more hydrothermal features today -- I was beginning to get a migrane from al the sulphur fumes. We also saw our second (and third) geyser -- we were driving by the Great Fountain Geyser (one of the few geysers that can be predicted with any regularity -- it goes on a 9-12 hour cycle) and saw it was about to erupt. While it was doing so, the nearby White Dome Geyser also went off.
It was our turn to prepared dinner, and wouldn't you know it, it happenedto also be the night I got a migrane, and that it actually stormed. While we were making pigs-in-a-blanket standing under a van hood in an open field. There was a mudslide trapping 16 (no deaths) from that storm -- if I were superstious, I might link my migrane and the mudslide. As soon as I put dinner on the fire, I went to bed -- I swear, between the hiking and the lack of snacks, I droppeed a pant size.
Monday
Got up, broke camp, drove like heck. And I took a shower once I got home. And it was heavenly.
Anyways, here's my trip report.
Wednesday
We got up at an ungodly hour of the morning... okay, it was 7 AM, but any time before 9 is too early in my book. We managed to get everythig packed, and left 15 minutes late. We drove. We drove a lot. Any idea how big Wyoming is? Or that Laramie/Cheyenne and Grand Teton/Yellowstone are on the oppostie corners of the state? I slept... I should have worked on my writing.
Anyways, we got to Grand Teton about mid-afternoon, and pitched tents. We wandered around for a bit, and decided to go canoeing at Colter Bay. However, the canoe docks were dried up, and we were informed that we wanted to go to Signal Mountain. We decided against this and went to Jenny Lake for swimming. The water was cold, and there were rocks.
After dinner, it started to rain -- thankfully it was bedtime.
Thursday
The tent did not leak. Hooray! We also got a pretty view of the clouds over the mountains. After breakfast, a bear decided to wander through camp -- thankfully we had cleaned up the food, and were standing by the cars.
This day, we went on a hike up Signal Mountain. I have mixed feeligns about hikes up mountains... on the one hand, going up them sucks. On the other, it's better to be going down when you are tired from a hike. Plus the view was awesome. After that, we went canoeing, and I learned how to manage one from Kim-roommate, who was a Girl Scout. If my Girl Scout troop had done more traditional things like canoeing and such, I might have stayed in it. After that, we went swimming in Jackson Lake -- whihc was just as cold and rocky as Jenny Lake, but closer to the campsite.
Dinner was delayed by a storm and bear warning -- no actual bear (or much of a storm) this time.
Friday
Another bear today! This time, I had to make a mad dash to grab my toiletries bag from the picnic table -- bears don't know that just because something smells like coconut or mint, does not make it edible. We broke camp and moved to Yellowstone. Good Lord, there are a lot of geysers there. And it's big -- it took about an hour for us to drive from the entrance to our campsite.
We went to the West Thumb Geyser basin (which is a pretty small one, with no real active geysers, but it was close to camp) and to see Old Faithful. We of course timed it so we arrived just as the thign went off, so we had to wait an hour to catch it again. It was here I noticed my hair was getting kind of icky -- no showers in the campsite, so I was relying on rinsing in lake water (TMI, I know) -- and I had sunburned my scalp -- the only part of my body not regularly covered in clothing or sunscreen. I promptly borrowed a hat from Caroline (our grad student coordinator's roommate). We saw many elk along the road.
We went swimming in Firehole River, which was both partially fed by hotsprings (read: warmer) and had a mud bottom. There were rapids just upstream from the swimming hole, so people would swim up the current until it got too strong, pull themselves along the rocks the rest of the way, then let the current carry them back. It was fun and a good workout.
This was the only night there was no risk of rain or clouds. My God, the stars were beautiful.
Saturday
No bear today. Instead Kim-roommate and I had to wait 15 minutes for a bison, who had decided that 3 feet from our tent was a good spot for breakfast, to turn away so we wouldn't spook him. There were also mule deer at the campsite.
Today we went to Mount Washburn, another uphill hile with a good view. On the wya back it started to rain, and we passed a few of the male students huddled under a tree -- the only tree for a good 500 fet on a mountainside. We also saw a boatload of more hyrdrothermal features, which I was too tired to appriciate. And a moose and our third bear -- this one from a safe distance. Still no grizzlies.
We skipped swimming, which was a shame as I felt in need of a rinse.
Sunday
We saw yet more hydrothermal features today -- I was beginning to get a migrane from al the sulphur fumes. We also saw our second (and third) geyser -- we were driving by the Great Fountain Geyser (one of the few geysers that can be predicted with any regularity -- it goes on a 9-12 hour cycle) and saw it was about to erupt. While it was doing so, the nearby White Dome Geyser also went off.
It was our turn to prepared dinner, and wouldn't you know it, it happenedto also be the night I got a migrane, and that it actually stormed. While we were making pigs-in-a-blanket standing under a van hood in an open field. There was a mudslide trapping 16 (no deaths) from that storm -- if I were superstious, I might link my migrane and the mudslide. As soon as I put dinner on the fire, I went to bed -- I swear, between the hiking and the lack of snacks, I droppeed a pant size.
Monday
Got up, broke camp, drove like heck. And I took a shower once I got home. And it was heavenly.
