Taco – Page 19

Bozeman Check-in #6 (Montana Life)

July 15, 2016 by Taco

Greetings from Montana!

My posts are bit more scrunched together this week since I was actually a week behind, so enjoy!

Well, Meem has been gone for a little over a week now, so it’s been back to the ole’ Taco & Tristen lifestyle, which admittedly isn’t a bad one. While Yellowstone was definitely the highlight of Meem’s visit, we did some other things as well and even had a good time right up until she left. In fact we even got in a hike/walk the night before she had to fly out – we went to the Cherry River trail area, which connects to the larger East Gallatin Recreation Area via trail.

A train even wanted to go hiking with us.

It was a wonderful day for hiking, it was a little on the chilly side, but out in the sun it felt fine.

It had been a little rainy, so it was nice to get out and enjoy some blue skies.

It was a really pretty area and what’s nice is that it’s only about a 10 minute drive from my house!

Since it’s so close to town, it’s a very well maintained trail system. In fact it’s part of their larger planned “Main Street to the Mountains” trail network.

We even saw a deer friend when we were out, or as Meem calls them “giant rats.”

All in all it was a great low-intensity hike and since I’d gotten off work about an hour early (for Meem’s last night in town) we had plenty of time to do it before dinner.

We’d made 8pm reservations at a place called The Blackbird Kitchen, which is my boss’s favorite place to eat in town. While there Meem had a wine named after Valentino!

Tristen and I had some “ramb ricken” while Meem had “rish ricken.” Both were very tasty.

The next day Meem flew out and then I was off to work and thus resumed my regularly scheduled Montana life – which is pretty much what this post is going to be about.

Much of what I’ve blogged about so far has been one adventure or another, such as that time I met a bear friend, or the time Tristen met some Montana dinosaurs. So, as a change of pace I’m going to share some insight into what my day-to-day existence is like out here, you know, mundane things that are somehow made interesting by the fact that you aren’t doing them but I am.

For starters, this is where I live.

Yep, that’s my house!

No not really, that’s where my landlord lives.

This is where I live.

Yep, a garage. But as the photos from an earlier post show it’s not really a garage. Ok, well part of it is, but the part where I live is actually a little apartment which was built inside of the garage. It’s pretty nice, and most importantly it’s a place to sleep. In fact I quite like my little sleeping-cubby, at least when it’s not too hot.

In fact, after nearly seven weeks of living here my only real complaints involve the crappy air conditioner and the (increasingly) bad internet, but I’ll whine about the internet in a moment.

Of course that isn’t to say that those are my only complaints. I have a swarm of lesser complaints, such as the stupid shower.

What’s wrong with it? Well the shower itself is fine other than the fact that the whole apartment has bad water pressure if someone is running a hose outside. It’s really the door that I hate. That stupid, STUPID door – it was made for people 4 feet tall and I hit my head on the frame nearly every other day, and, because it has a track for the sliding door, it really digs into my scalp.

Also that bear photo (which I actually like) on the wall has a tendency to fall off randomly since it’s just sitting on a nail. This is made worse by the fact that if I have both my front and back door open my apartment turns into a wind vortex. I may or may not have used glue to “fix” that problem.

But, by and large, life is swell with Tristen.

We are creatures of habit, so we have a fairly rock-solid routine and we both have no qualms with such an existence.

During the weekdays life starts at 6:25am – nope, not 6:30, 6:25. We then get up and around and head over to the landlord’s house for some exercise. On our way we pass through the garage, where this Sentry Light follows us.

It’s a good idea, and I’ve since come to like it when the garage is dark, but when I first arrived I did not like that light following me, not one bit. It just follows you, flooding you in a bath of white, unwelcoming light. In fact half the time it just shines right into your eyes because it can. It has a 180 degree range of motion, so really there’s only a tiny sliver of the garage where it won’t find you, and watch you, silently.

Once outside we take in the (often – but not always) gorgeous Montana mornings.

And then we go into the main house.

Their house actually contains an apartment in addition to the house. When you first come in, you can either go right into the main house or up the stairs to your left which leads to an apartment above the garage.

My landlord has a few rental properties (and really seems just to have a lot of properties in general), but three rental units are located right there on their personal property/home. There is my unit in the garage [medium], the unit above the garage in the main house [small], and then a big unit above their barn [large]. The “niceness” of the unit kind of corresponds to its size, with the above-garage unit being the cheapest and lowest on features, while the above-barn unit being large and fancy. Mine’s right in the middle.

Anyways, I’ve never been up to the above-garage unit, I just know about it from when I was considering renting it. Tristen and I always turn right to proceed into the main house.

As you can see, it’s kind of a shabby run down place.

It’s kind of old and decrepit.

Honestly I have no idea how they live there.

I mean, look at this in-home theater they have; so small.

And their “fully-stocked” snack bar only has Red Vines and not Twizzlers.

Plus there are wild animals just running loose in the house.

So yeah, obviously I’m being sarcastic and they have a very nice house. In addition to all of the above (which is honestly only about 1/2 of the house – I haven’t seen the rest as I don’t tend to just go explore people’s homes) they have a pretty decent gym in the basement.

In fact the gym actually played a pretty big role in my decision to rent with them, that and the fact that it was a good bit cheaper to stay out in the boonies rather than closer to or in town.

It’s pretty nice; I’ve got a schedule worked out with my landlords where I have the gym all to myself from around 6:40am through 7:40am, seven days a week. Of course they don’t tend to get up until around 8am, so that was an easy sell.

The only issue with the gym has been that a few weeks in the treadmill broke, but it’s since been fixed – though I’m now paranoid about using it after it almost threw me through the wall once. Also, once or twice my landlords have had guests, which meant teeny toddlers in the house who visited me in the gym at 6:45am, and if you know me then that wasn’t happening. Fortunately, I’m so #swag that I even have a “backup” gym out in the garage that I can use if the main house is a bit too “peoplely.”

The downside to this “gym” is that it’s much colder in the mornings, has far less equipment, and the machine isn’t bolted down, so I’ve had to use some clever scrap wood to keep it from tipping too much. Also, when I first arrived it was covered in dust and bird shit, and since then the birds have proceeded to shit on it at every opportunity, so that’s an ongoing process. Also, since the garage obviously has no free-weights, I use water jugs and bottles of bleach to make due – that said, the water jugs get real heavy real fast. That kind of takes me back to my earlier weight days, where I used milk bottles filled with water before I had real weights.

As for running when the toddlers have occupied the gym, I’m surrounded by 50 bajillion acres of land, so that’s no issue.

Once on my way to work I pass a Moo-cow traffic control box.

It’s hard to make out in that photo, but trust me it’s a cow. Many of the traffic control boxes in the Bozeman area have artwork on them, from cows to cultural murals to landscapes.

Now that I’ve found a consistent parking area (it was a pain the first two days) my drive into work usually isn’t that bad. Sometimes I even see weird/cool stuff like this.

Ignore my giant blurry finger, I was too lazy to crop it out.

House Moose has a very particular parking spot that they like:

It has to be that particular tree on that particular street, otherwise House Moose gets upset – though sometimes being close to that tree is good enough. In that photo parking was easy, but some days that street is oddly packed. It’s about 2 blocks from my work, so not a bad walk at all, plus it’s far better than paying to park .5 block away.

Once at work, I spend all day eating European chocolate.

In reality I much prefer what I actually do to eating chocolate all day, which is kind of saying something.

While I don’t have my own big office like I did in Santa Fe, I’m also not sharing a former supply closet with three other people like in Denver either.

As for what I do at work, well, it’s a huge range of stuff. But basically I do what you would expect an environmental lawyer to do. I protect the environment.

I essentially have three main focus areas and each main area has its own sub-topics. They are:

“The Wild” (Wildlife, Wild Lands, The Ocean Ecosystem, The Arctic)
“Healthy Communities” (Clean Air, Clean Water, Pesticides and Toxic Chemicals)
“Climate and Energy” (Climate Change, Oil and Gas Drilling, Coal, Clean Energy)

Thus far I have focused heavily on the Wildlife and Oil and Gas Drilling side of things, though it looks like I might have some Wild Lands work coming down the pipeline and possibly some Coal stuff as well. In all of these major and sub-categories, you can pretty much assume that I fall solely on the “Protect” or “Enforce” side of things.

As some real examples: if someone wants to put a mine inside a national park – I say “Nope.” If someone wants to kill off critically low grizzly bear populations – I say “Nope.” If someone wants to take more land from a tribe – I say “Nope.” If someone wants to exceed their authority and pass unconstitutional local land-use ordinances – I say “Nope.” If someone wants to dump toxic waste into a river because it will “Only effect a low-income population” [actual quote] – I say “Nope.” If the government doesn’t want to enforce its own environmental laws – I say “Yep, you will and you’ll like it.”

Stuff like that, you get the gist. Basically I’ve become a massive thorn in the side of Capitalism, “Muh Freedoms”, State Governments, and the Federal Government (namely EPA, DOJ, DOE, DOI, and far-right Republicans in general), and I love it. Of course if you like clean air and clean water then you should probably love it too.

After I’m done being a “Tree Hugger” who needs to “go fuck themselves” [also an actual quote – made directly to me] for the day, Tristen and I head home. Unfortunately the drive home is not as pleasant as the drive in. Basically Bozeman is one of those towns that have grown too quickly and thus traffic can be pretty bad during rush hour. Thankfully it’s not as god awful as Denver was, but it’s still bad. That said, I eventually figured out a “back door” to getting out of town, but then this started happening.

It’s to see in that photo, but there is a Bakken oil train (yet again) that has been coming through town right in the 5:00 – 5:20pm range. As it is an oil train, and they’ve been exploding left and right these days because we are absolutely morons when it comes to our rail systems, it has to slow way down when in populated areas. This is a good thing. It means that stuff like Lac-Mégantic will be less likely to happen again. Of course this is also a bad thing if the train schedule is stupid, and 5pm is stupid. Sooooo, essentially this train, from a traffic standpoint, cripples the entire northeastern portion of Bozeman while it rolls through town. IF, and I mean IF I can beat it, then my drive home via my “back door” is mostly smooth sailing, but if I don’t beat it, then yeah, the drive sucks.

But when I do beat it (which comes down to minutes), and so long as I avoid 19^th and 7^th, a lot of my in town drive is pretty much stuff like this.

Easy-peasy.

I even have a nice landmark on the turn off to my road, which helps me find it in the middle of the vast expanse the main highway goes through:

Photo taken at dusk – via Meem.

Once home for the weeknights, it’s mostly just chilling for Tristen and I. Well, chilling and becoming enraged at the internet [HMM NOTICE A THEME, DENMARK? DENVER? SANTA FE? BOZEMAN? WHY DO YOU FORSAKE ME INTERNET GODS]. But, still, mostly chilling.

We normally keep it simple for dinner, and three-ingredient chowder is about as complicated as our menu has gotten.

Sometimes we just eat Puffins. The cereal, not the bird.

Like always, Jeopardy remains a staple at the Taco household – Tristen would “rick my rass” otherwise.

Side-note: As it is near election time there are obviously lots of local political ads, I find it funny that the major platform for one of the front-runners for MT Governor seems to revolve around the fact that he kills lots of animals and has their body parts mounted to his wall (seriously, not even joking, the entire premise of the ad is about his hunting skills).

Oh, and of course there is also beer at the Taco house, lots of beer. I generally drink one beer per night during the summers (and often two on weekend nights).

You could say I enjoy exploring new beers just as much as I do exploring new places.

Why yes, I do use one of my two mini-refrigerators almost solely for beer, don’t judge.

One thing I like about a lot of Montana beer is the western theme, and by that I mean wildlife, and by that I mean bears! 😀

Although our bear beers haven’t entirely limited to Montana:

I’m actually saving both of those boxes for Valentino.

Though in fairness not all of the beers are bear-related, others maintain the western theme in different ways:

Aside from eating, watching Jeopardy, and drinking alcohol, a big way for Tristen and I to pass the time has been to watch Game of Thrones.

People had been saying I should watch it for at least one or two years, so we figured that absent business classes (thank God), we’d start it this summer. I abhor people who casually spoil things, so for this post I’ll restrict my coverage of GoT to saying that it is very, very good. As of writing this I’m nearly half-way through season 5, so I’m still about 1.5 seasons from being caught up, though the show isn’t over so I’ll have to wait 400 years to actually finish it, but I managed that with Breaking Bad so I know I can likely survive.

What hasn’t been good is the freaking interwebs. To be fair, when I first arrived, my internet wasn’t horrible – it wasn’t good, or even decent, but it wasn’t unusable either. Well, in the past week something has changed and I’m now rocking internet speeds of ~1999. The result is that for every two minutes of GoT I am able to watch, I spend the next 1.5 minutes buffering it, AND it looks like crap on top of it. Of course this happens after my free trial of HBO Now expires and I pay for a month.

Ugh.

Anyways, enough complaining about that for the moment, and – to be positive for a change – it’s not been every night, so maybe this is just a phase and I’ll be able to return to watching streaming media without pulling my hair out soon.

So, that is pretty much what my weekdays look like. Weekends are fairly similar, except I sleep in on Saturdays and go on a longer outdoor run, while on Sunday I just go lift weights for an hour but still get up at 6:25am (In order to conform to the gym schedule). I also tend to make a little fancier breakfasts, which isn’t hard since I normally just eat cereal.

The weekends are my exploring time, as made evident by pretty much every post thus far in the Bozeman Check-in series. So, I won’t recount those adventures here, other than to say that you can come across some weird signs on Montana’s back-roads.

Speaking of exploring, I returned Moose to his home on June 29^th. It was kind of a sad day.

But the good news is that when Moose (2016 Toyota Corolla) departed, Moose II – Son of Moose (2016 Ford Focus) came home with us.

A Jeep Meem had rented for a day can be seen in the background.

One thing I thought was funny about Moose II is that the car rental guy made it seem like it was “super kewl” that I got two keys, though what he failed to mention is that the keys are sealed together.

So useful having two keys, yep.

Aside from exploring with House Moose, we also fill our weekends with odds and ends, such as replacing light bulbs.

Sure the landlord could have done it for us, but Tristen wants to be manlies. Plus we had 4 light-bulbs burn out in the course of 24 hours, so I kind of just took the bulbs and ladder from the garage and did it myself rather than have the landlord come over 4 times.

Speaking of light, the power tends to go out here when it gets windy. Fortunately my landlord let me borrow a flashlight.

It’s actually like a pet wee spotter, I looked it up. It has a flashlight and a black light and comes in some kit with pet wee remover. So, I took a huge gamble and took the black light around my apartment one night expecting to find the 7^th circle of hell, but fortunately (and thankfully) the apartment was actually really clean – no hidden horrors were revealed by the black light. In fact the dirtiest thing was probably Tristen’s toes (SB will know what I’m talking about).

As I’ve poked around my apartment over the past several weeks, I’ve found a couple of cool things, such as this mining first aid kit from the 1960s.

MSA stands for “Mine Safety Appliances” (which is actually still around). I don’t know the exact year for the kit, but online research pins it down as a version from the 60s. Some of the original supplies are even still in there, but about 1/2 of it is “newer” stuff.

As for why a 1960s mining first aid kit was under my kitchen sink, the world may never know.

I also found a rather tattered copy of “Pelt – The Trapper’s Magazine” from January 1935.

From everything I can tell it’s an original and not a reprint.

Speaking of hunting, despite my “Tree Hugger” status, I’ve done a lot of hunting since coming to Montana – insect hunting that is.

This bad boy has claimed over 100 insect lives.

See, one thing about taking a garage and putting an apartment in it, is that no matter how nice the apartment is, it’s probably not going to be sealed as well as a house. So, ~~pretty much~~ every day I get bug “friends.” These range from hilariously enormous house flies, to horrifyingly enormous hornets, to annoying gnats, to friendly spiders, to evil spiders, to happy little beetles, to black ants, to demon ants from hell. It’s an endless swarm, I could an hour each night just hunting them if I wanted (as soon as you kill one another seems to replace it), and sometimes I have stand-offs with them right at bedtime.

I tend to kill them all if they won’t leave; Insect God will know his own.

That said, some of them leave peacefully and are just being insect bros that don’t want to eat me in my sleep, such as this little grasshopper.

Other than the insects, the only other “threat” to my well-being (aside from self-induced aneurysm over the internet) is getting woken up in the middle of the night by a hailstorm.

Given my phone’s utter crappiness at night, you’ll just have to believe me that it was hailing.

As much as I love my metal roof when it comes to rain, it sounds like the Olympians and Titans have resumed their war when it hails – and since my sleeping-cubby puts my head about 3 feet from the roof, it can be a startling experience at 2am. Plus, since it hails a decent amount out here, this hasn’t been a one-time occurrence. Other than the hail the storms haven’t been too bad, though that doesn’t mean there haven’t been storms.

There are supposed to be mountains there.

That said, on the whole the weather has been rather pleasant.

It’s been easy to see why “Big Sky Country” got its name – though it is kind of odd, it gets dark-dark here quite late. In fact when I got to bed at 10 – 10:30pm it’s still not really that dark out, so I haven’t really seen much of the “Big Starry Sky.”

But during the long daylight hours, this is usually what I see when I step outside.

Of course we’ve also had a few mid 90s heat-waves which kind of sucked given my crappy ac, and on the opposite side of the fence we’ve even had snow in July.

Yeah seriously, snow in July.

Tristen’s mountain hidden behind snow clouds.

And here it is again without the snow clouds.

But, as mentioned, things have been pretty good on the weather front all things considered. The extremes (e.g. 95 degrees or snowing in July) have been just that, extremes. The constant seems to be partially cloudy skies and temperatures around 78-83, with low humidity and cool nights and hot days. Very livable.

So that’s that, those are the general kinds of things that I do during my more mundane non-blog-worthy moments. Of course I just wrote a post about them, so I guess they are blog-worthy after all! If nothing else this proves that I’m not out hiking all the time, though that would be a sweet job.

Until next time,
-Taco

P.S. Go watch the bear camera, it’s Valentino (and Meem, and Taco) approved!

Bozeman Check-in #5 (Yellowstone)

July 11, 2016 by Taco

Greetings from Montana,

It’s time for a slightly late check-in, but hey, I’ve been busy. As you might have already guessed based on the title of this post, this check-in is all about Yellowstone National Park. Now, I thought a lot about this post and how I wanted to do it. The thing is, there’s just no good way to write a blog post about Yellowstone. No image is going to capture the proper scale or beauty of the place. No description I can come up with is going to do the park justice. While I wouldn’t say Yellowstone is something you need to see to believe, it is something that you need to see to see. So, this post can, at best, only scratch the surface of the park, and that’s sort of my mindset as I start writing it. I’m not attempting to give you a virtual tour of the park, even 1000s of photos and endless descriptive pages couldn’t do that. No, I’m simply recounting my own little voyage to it, and even then only in a seriously abridged fashion. Overall, the point is thus: if you can go to Yellowstone, you should. And since the park is 3,500 square miles, you can even plan on going more than once. As a last administrative note, some of these photos were taken by Meem, so photo credit goes to her as well.

In many ways Meem’s visit kind of centered around our Yellowstone trip (similar to last years Rocky Mountain National Park trip), and for his part, Tristen was immensely excited about it.

So, on Friday of the 4^th of July weekend I took a half day at work and Meem and I were off, first headed east to Livingston, and then south to Gardiner, which is located at the North Entrance to the Park.

We stayed at a “Mom and Pop” type hotel called the Yellowstone River Motel, which was located within sight of the Roosevelt Arch. Tristen was quite a fan of the very, very red heat lamp in the bathroom.

After a quick stop at the hotel we went and got gas at the Sinclair, which quickly became Tristen’s ALL-TIME favorite gas station, for obvious reasons.

From there it was just a quick jaunt over to the entryway Arch itself.

The arch was very large and is adorned with language from the Organic Act of 1872 which created Yellowstone.

If it wasn’t obvious, the arch is named after President Theodore Roosevelt, who laid the cornerstone.

Once inside the park, traveling via the Grand Loop Road, it didn’t take long for civilization to fade away.

We even found this cool little area, that I honestly had no idea fell inside of Yellowstone.

When you come in from the North Entrance, the first major area you come across – and really the administrative hub of Yellowstone – is the Mammoth Hot Springs Area, which includes Fort Yellowstone. There is a herd of elk that has pretty much taken over this area.

There are also creatures of the smaller variety, such as this little fellow.

The administrative offices and visitor centers occupy many of the old fort buildings, and this is where Meem and I picked up our National Park Passports, which were the NPS Centennial Edition no less.

From there we headed up to the Mammoth Hot Springs themselves.

It was amazing how colorful (and smelly) they were. I learned that the algae and bacteria are what cause the color differences, something I never knew before.

Tristen was pretty enamored with the place, as it was “Rust rike rinosaur rimes”

I found the geography to be just as fascinating as the colors.

It was pretty cool.. er.. hot, rather, how the springs sort of occupied this little “dead zone” which was surrounded by greenery.

And when I say “dead zone,” I pretty much mean it – though it was beautiful in its own way.

Once out of the Mammoth area, we headed for greener prairies.

Our destination was Lamar Valley, which is known for its wildlife populations – especially at dawn and dusk, and since it just so happened to be nearing dusk, Meem and I figured that would be a good time to visit – and it just so happened that it was a very good time to visit indeed.

There was a herd of bison grazing up on a little mound. They were in their defensive circle with the calves in the middle, and with the sun behind them it was a pretty amazing moment. This was the first time in my life I’d seen wild bison like this and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. It was double cool since wild bison are sort of my clients right now.

Tristen even seemed a bit entranced by it. That or he was trying to figure out how to eat them.

While we were watching that herd, a couple stopped in a car and told us that an even bigger herd was up the road a bit and was moving across the highway. So we jumped back into Moose II and headed further into the valley, and sure enough, hundreds and hundreds of wild bison awaited us.

Tristen had the privilege of driving us through the edge of the herd

But once you got more towards the middle, you really couldn’t do much other than share the road with them.

In addition to having one bison about 2’ front the car (at most – seriously) we got to hear them nomin’ things and talking to each other. A couple were even fighting! Tristen loved that, obviously.

We had also came at just the right time of year to see tons of babies!

Even once we’d passed the bison herds the area continued to be absolutely stunning.

In fact, it was along this road to the northeastern entrance that we had a fairly spellbinding moment. In addition to the setting sun, we had a rainbow over the Lamar River. It was simply incredible; I can do it no justice.

After our little spiritual nature moment, we kept heading northeast in the hopes of finding something to eat at the Northeast Entrance since it was going to be way too late by the time we got back to Gardiner. Although the town at that entrance was more of a village and very, very quiet, we found a little place to have a late dinner.

It might look like a greasy spoon – and sure, the restrooms are outside in a cabin – but the food was amazing and our waiter was a summer student from France. We even got to sit at table with a bear photo above it and the dining room had a moose holding flowers in its mouth!

On the way back it was pretty late and obviously quite dark. I mean dark-dark, there was no light pollution whatsoever to be found out here. But what was to be found was a coyote, who seemed quite at home walking back and forth in the cone of our headlights when we met him just outside of Tower Junction.

He just kept meandering back and forth, like we were there to light the way for him, it was quite funny. After that we headed back to the hotel and Meem even went and got me beers at like 12am.

The next day we headed back into the park and it didn’t take long for us to find a bison-bro just chillaxing.

He had made himself a little bed next to the trees.

We were heading to the Norris Geyser Basin, but first we stopped at the area around the Museum of the National Park Ranger. Which is housed in an old Army station turned ranger station turned museum. It was a cool place and we got to talk to two retired rangers, plus the area itself was gorgeous.

Tristen found some bison poo, he was proud of that.

After seeking out all the poo in the immediate area, he chilled on the porch for a bit.

From there we headed into the geyser basin itself.

One of the first geysers you come to is the Steamboat Geyser, which is the tallest active geyser in the world! It can shoot boiling water as high as 300 feet in the air! Of course it’s widely unpredictable, and eruptions can occur as frequently as every four days, or once every fifty years. Yep, quite a range. If you were curious the last major eruption when we were there was on September 3^rd, 2014. Of course just because it isn’t having a major eruption doesn’t mean it isn’t doing anything.

In fact it seemed to be having a fairly constant smaller eruption.

The basin contains a wide variety of geological points, from geysers, to pools, to steam vents, to springs, etc. You name it, it probably has it. Tristen was in dinosaur heaven.

Like the Mammoth area, there was a very clear line between “forest” and “basin.”

One of Tristen’s favorite things in the area was the “Green Dragon Spring” for obvious reasons.

It was quite large, very hot, and well, green!

Little geysers sort of just dotted all over the place, some weren’t doing much while others were just chugging along – at least the ones that hadn’t been partially clogged by dumbasses throwing stuff in them earlier in the park’s history.

It was kind of cool seeing the differences in the geysers. A few of them shot straight up, while other’s sort of splashed around, while others just kind of boiled.

Some of the geysers in this area get extremely hot, in fact one of them “Pork Chop Geyser” (which literally blew itself apart but is still active – and it also recently ate someone) was once measured at 459 degrees Fahrenheit!

One of the larger sub-regions of the Norris Basin is the Porcelain Basin.

This area gets its name from the porcelain appearance of the waters.

It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and, as mentioned, it all has to do with the heat, algae, and bacteria.

Intermixed with the “porcelain” springs are also some more “ordinary” hot springs.

After walking around pretty much the entire basin, we headed to the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. You’re forgiven if you had no idea Yellowstone had a “Grand Canyon,” I didn’t either. But it is absolutely something that can’t be missed.

Even Tristen was stopped in his tracks (both literally and figuratively).

Naturally after looking at the canyon we wanted to go down in it, like true explorers – or people who just need to get across, or both. Plus, there are both “Upper” and “Lower” falls to see in the canyon.

One of the better ways to get a good view of the Lower Falls is to take Uncle Tom’s Trail.

I’d really recommend reading the history on the trail, as it’s pretty interesting. As you can see, it’s changed a bit from rope ladders, but it’s still quite steep!

The trail pretty much just descends with the Lower Falls.

The bottom viewing area is as close as you can get to the base of the falls without doing a bit of (dangerous) trailblazing.

Here is the view from the bottom looking further down the canyon.

Meem didn’t go all the way to the bottom (though she went further than she planned, yay Meem!), but Tristen and I did, which was fun until we had to go up.

Once done with Uncle Tom’s Trail we headed further up the canyon to the (very well titled) Artist Point (though apparently it kind of got its name by mistake). It doesn’t really need a description, I’ll let the picture speak for itself.

Along with the Lamar Valley Rainbow, Artist Point is probably the other main area that I just really struggle to capture and describe. So I won’t really try, but I will say that both places literally gave me goose bumps in a very good way. The sheer scale is just textually incomprehensible. It’s absolutely amazing. Again, go if you can.

Interestingly enough, no sooner than I had snapped a couple of photos of Artist Point (Meem was still getting some) it started to hail pretty substantially.

Hail is fairly common out here, but this was my first time being stuck out in it. The few of us out at the point took shelter under some trees.

After getting bombarded by the Heavens (I suppose to counterbalance all the natural beauty) we took off towards Hayden Valley. Along the way we spotted a wolf eating what looked like an Elk down by the Yellowstone River. I had no idea how HUGE wild grey wolves can get. We also saw some more bison herds.

Of course even without the wildlife the valley was stunning.

Inside the valley is something called the “Mud Volcano” which is kind of something you have to stop and look at based on the name alone – plus I don’t think Tristen would have let us pass it up anyways.

It was pretty much what it sounds like, a Mud Volcano! However, what was next to it was even cooler (not sure if literally): the Dragon’s Mouth Spring!

The spring was making a constant “roaring” sound and was spitting steam and hot water. The noise came from the water running along the cave walls. It was really awesome, we were all surprised by how loud it was!

From there we kept heading south to Yellowstone Lake, which was HUGE, 136 square miles to be exact.

It was also gorgeous, especially at dusk (if it wasn’t obvious we did a lot of traveling later in the day (more wildlife and less people).

While driving along the lake, which seemed to go on forever, night caught up with us. But that didn’t stop us from stopping at probably the most famous place in the entire park, and since this is probably the most famous park in the United States (if not the world), that’s saying something.

Yep, Old Faithful itself. Now our Old Faithful trip was a bit unusual. For starters it was like 10:30pm. So, while the place is was PACKED (and I mean, PACKED) during the day (especially during the Centennial Celebration on 4^th of July Weekend) it was pretty barren at night. My guess is that there were no more than 40 people in the entire area, and if that sounds like a lot it’s because there is a hotel and lodge right there, so 40 people is actually pretty dang deserted. However, since it was so dark when we pulled up, Meem and I had no idea where Old Faithful was, so I took off walking while Meem stayed in the car to eat some snacks and organize her photos. Turns out we weren’t that far from Old Faithful at all. Tristen and I found it in under 5 minutes, and while it was steaming it wasn’t erupting. Of course with no cell signal in the area, and with all the places with “countdown” clocks closed up, we had no idea how far away the next eruption was (Old Faithful erupts every 60-110 minutes, with a +/- 10 minute variation and an average time of 74 minutes), so we just sat down and watched the steam rise and the final rays of sunlight fade away (it stays light very late out here).

If you look closely you’ll see Old Faithful steaming and an outline of a certain T-Rex.

Right about the time Tristen and I were going to go get Meem (we’d sat for maybe 15 minutes) Old Faithful started erupting. So while my Old Faithful experience probably wasn’t an ordinary one – for instance I watched it by moonlight with a dinosaur as my companion, it was still an experience I wouldn’t change for anything. It was way cool to finally see the world’s most famous geyser in action. Once it was really going – and I’d say it went for 3-4 minutes (it can last anywhere from 1.5 to 5 minutes) some people started shining flashlights on the water blast, which made it look really cool (the area isn’t lighted). Sadly I have no photos since by that point it was too dark and my phone camera sucks even in dim light, let alone darkness. So, like I said, go if you can.

That night we drove to West Yellowstone, which is just beyond the Park’s West Gate (meaning we’d seen three of the five gates!) and got some sleep. The next day we started heading back north in the park.

Along the road we saw a grizzly bear! My first wild grizzly (last time was a black bear)! We even think that she might have had two cubs. She close enough that I could tell she was a grizzly, but just far enough away that I’m not sure if the two brown things that appeared to be following her were cubs (or tree stumps that had came to life), but I think that is an educated guess and it would be the right time of year for them.

We also made a stop at Tower Fall along the way. It was actually kind of a “Oh hey let’s stop here” kind of stop, which are sometimes the best kind.

While you couldn’t get right up to the base of these falls (at least not via trail – it was closed for restoration), you got a nice view from the adjacent cliff.

The falls are located right near the confluence of Tower Creek and the Yellowstone River.

Tristen and I were mountain men and climbed all the way down to the water, which in hindsight we probably should have had a Backcountry Permit to do, but oh well we left no trace (I am extraordinarily respectful of such requests).

After that adventure we kept slowly progressing north, with lots of little sight-seeing stops. It was raining off and on, but we didn’t let that stop us.

It was actually really funny, right around Tower Junction we saw our coyote buddy again! He was only like 500 yards up the road from where we spotted him last time and he was doing the exact same thing as before – zigzagging in front of the traffic like he owned the place. I got a kick out of it, must be a diva coyote.

From diva coyote’s house we continued up the road to a little Ranger Station in the hopes of getting a passport stamp for the Tower Fall, but the ranger was out on patrol. So, we continued on to the Petrified Forest area, which in addition to having a really well preserved petrified redwood (yes, a redwood in Wyoming) also has a really pretty valley.

Around 50 million years ago, scientists say this area of the park was flourishing with tall redwood trees, maples, magnolias, oaks, dogwoods, and pines when volcanic eruptions from the nearby Absaroka Mountain range buried the forest in ash. Unfortunately much of the forest is now gone, either naturally eroded away, or even more unfortunately – destroyed by dumbass tourists for souvenirs. So now one of the last remaining trees has its own little guard fence.

After that we headed back up through the Mammoth area, where Tristen was able to stop and claim the old mail carrier’s cabin.

That would have been one hell of a difficult job – delivering mail in Yellowstone before the roads and well-established trails.

Tristen even made a little Ground Squirrel buddy – who lived under the porch.

From there it was back north to the North Gate and Gardiner.

This road follows the Gardiner River.

One thing that makes this stretch of the river special is that it’s a Boiling River.

Another tree being resilient.

If you’re thinking it just looks like an ordinary river, then you’re not wrong. What makes it a boiling river is that in one location a hot spring dumps boiling/scalding hot water into the cool mountain river water, which in turn creates a wonderful little hot spring area in the river itself.

And yep, you can swim in it – and Tristen and I did.

You could really tell where the “cold” water was, and were the “very hot” water was. When I first got in it felt very cold, but as I approached the convergence it got extremely warm. In fact you have to be careful not to scald yourself (as the signs at the trailhead point out)! But Tristen and I were fine, and Meem got some photos of us swimming, though it was more like “standing on a rocky riverbed” and “sitting next to boiling water” than traditional swimming. Still loads of fun though.

On the way out the rain caught us, so I sprinted back to the car with Tristen and toweled myself off. The cool thing was that the rainstorm made the drive back into Gardiner gorgeous.

That evening (which despite being like 8pm was still our earliest night yet) we got some dinner and chilled at the hotel (Yellowstone River Motel again), which has some great views of the river.

Since it was late on July 3rd, we even saw a couple of amateur fireworks!

Meem also won 25$ on a machine in the local Restaurant/Saloon/Casino (lol, for real).

The next day we got up and around with no hurry and sort of said our goodbyes to the Gardiner area (we vastly preferred Gardiner [North Gate town] over West Yellowstone [West Gate town], as an FYI).

We were greeted by bright blue skies, which didn’t make leaving any easier.

We had breakfast right next door to the Flying Pig’s Camp Store, which both Meem and I figured Pig would love!

Meem offered to buy me a horse ride through Flying Pig’s (I’ve never rode before in my entire life and doing so is one of my Montana goals, though sadly its expensive so who knows if it will happen), but I was ready to get back to the Bozeman area and still kind of tired from all my driving (over 380 miles just in the park itself!). So we got Moose II some food – at Tristen’s most favorite station on Earth:

Then we were on our way.

The trip back was cool because we saw some things we’d missed while heading the opposite direction.

Plus, after some afternoon rain in Yankee Jim Canyon, there were some weird nearly perfectly horizontal clouds in the sky – and no, this isn’t a camera artifact or something, they were cloud lines.

And heck, we even saw some more wild Elk – who were nomin’ some farmer’s crop.

Once back to my Montana home we unpacked, chilled for a bit, and then went and saw Finding Dory (it’s good) and then got ice cream – a very good end to a Yellowstone Vacation.

So, all in all, my message is thus: Like many natural wonders, Yellowstone must be experienced in person to truly be experienced. And while I hope you’ve enjoyed my little digital check-in, I can’t stress enough that I barely even scratched the surface of the place. For instance, the photos in this post only represent about 15-16% of the photos Meem and I took, and we only saw a tiny portion of the overall park – that is the stuff that you can easily drive to. Some people have said you could spend a month there, and if you are a hiker/outdoorsman, I do not think that is an exaggeration. Heck, even in a car you could easily spend a week and as it just so happens your $30 park pass (as of 2016) is good for exactly 7 days.

I’d definitely like to go back again in the future, preferably with more time and during an “off-peak” (people) season, not only because there were be fewer crowds, but also because the places to stay might be more affordable (or you might actually be able to get a campsite). But even if I don’t get to go during a non-peak season SB and I are already planning to go while she’s out here, which is exciting! Plus, I’ll never forget this park, and that’s because going and actually seeing these hard-won protected lands reminds me of why I do what I do, even when it doesn’t pay much, is largely thankless, and causes a lot of people to hate me. But, I’ve learned that being hated for a good cause is quite alright with me, quite alright indeed.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, Nothing is going to get better. It’s not.”
~The Lorax

Until next time,
-Taco

The Odd Things – Vaseline Lip Therapy

July 4, 2016 by Taco

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

And now for something entirely unrelated.

[Update: The tube is still going as of November, 2017]
[Update 2: The tube finally depleted itself and achieved Vaseline nirvana on March 27th, 2018 – meaning that it achieved at least a full decade of service.]

It’s been a long while since I last did a “Odd Things” post, going on two years in fact. The last post focused on my high-quality scissors that I was so proud of (and are still around, in case you were wondering). However, this time around I’m going to focus on something even older than the scissors, this weird little tube of Vaseline Lip Therapy

So what’s weird about this little tube, which by all accounts looks very normal? Well, it seems to be infinite. Yes, this finite tube seems to contain an infinite amount of Vaseline. A bold statement I know. However I’ve had this tube since I think 2008. I can remember having it when SB and I lived in our first apartment and we moved in together in 2008. I have no definitive proof that it has existed since 2008, as sadly there is no “Creation Date” – at least not one my mind can decipher. The closest I can get to its manufacturing date lies somewhere in this code “08208HU17” which is printed on the sealed lip of the tube. So, it came into existence sometime in the 2008 – 2010 range, so at the very least its six years old.

Now, in fairness, I have not consistently used it for six plus years. In fact a lot of the earlier years (which sounds odd in the context of a tube of Vaseline) it just set next to my bed and was only utilized a couple times a month. However, I started using it a bit more extensively once we moved to Boston and I had to start walking outside in those harsh winters. So, I started using it a lot more, pretty much nightly. It was around this time that I started to realize that 1: the tube didn’t seem to be depleting, and 2: this tube was old (but still worked well). But, being a tube of Vaseline, life went on. And, I probably would haven’t thought about it again if not for my time in Denver.

As my first real foray into the Rocky West I quickly learned that the air was quite dry out there. Thankfully being the over-planner that I am I had brought along my Vaseline Lip Therapy. However, about 1 week into my stay I noticed that the tube seemed low, so I sent an emergency pigeon out to SB who was kind enough to send me two Carmex tubes (and also my swimming goggles – yay pool!). Well, if it wasn’t obvious the Vaseline tube didn’t run out. Not that week, or for the rest of the summer. Not only that, it kept going for the rest of the year. Then, it came with me to Santa Fe where the air was even drier than Denver, and despite heavy use, it lasted all through my New Mexico trip as well. But, not content to be a two-internship kind of tube, the Vaseline lasted throughout the rest of 2L and has now followed me to Bozeman. Unsurprisingly, Montana is also dry (though not as dry as New Mexico) so my Vaseline tube is getting near-nightly use, which, as you might expect, doesn’t seem to be depleting the tube.

Still, there have been a few nights where I thought “Yep, it’s finally running out.” But then it doesn’t, and those were the same thoughts I had over a year ago in Denver. So maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, but for now the “infinite” hypothesis stands.

Yes, yes, I understand that it really isn’t infinite (or is it?) but half the fun in all the little “Odd Things” that life throws our direction is to just believe. 🙂

Until next time,
-Taco

Bozeman Check-in #4 (Ambassadors, Meem, & Bears)

June 29, 2016 by Taco

Greetings from Montana!

Wow, so very much has happened since the last check in. So much in fact that I should probably really get started if I hope to have any chance of staying within my general word quota – or rather, not exceeding my word quota by several-fold! I seriously considered busting this up into and “4” and a “4.5” check-in, but I’m just going to power through it so that I don’t get too far behind.

Basically the three big things are that: 1) I got to be an “ambassador” on behalf of my employer to the Blackfeet Indian Nation, 2) Meem arrived!, and 3) Bears!

Starting with my visit to the Blackfoot Reservation, I’ll first give a seriously abridged back story, sans a lot of details due to confidentiality issues (both legal and tribal). Basically, way back when the federal government set the boundaries of the Blackfoot Reservation, they cut out the most sacred area to the tribe, the Badger-Two Medicine region (so named for Badger Creek and Two Medicine River). This area is just south of Glacier National Park. The government of course gave a multitude of reasons for not giving the tribe their most sacred lands, none of which were really any good. Fast forward to the 1980s, the federal government then decides to start leasing areas of the Badger-Two Medicine to oil and mining companies so that they could start drilling and mining. A good way of describing this from the tribe’s perspective is that it would essentially be the same as putting an oil rig in the middle of Vatican City, or boring a mine shaft under the Holy Sepulchre. To make matter’s worse, the federal government didn’t even properly assess the environmental damage of these leases, as they are required to do under law. So, lots of litigation started, that has lasted to this day. A big recent victory was the cancellation of one of these leases after 35 years – and due to the litigation no sites were ever actually established. However, there are still 14 some remaining lease sites, and while the federal government has flipped its position in the past three decades – and now doesn’t want extraction operations there – the companies still have leases, and so it’s up to challengers to prove that the leases are faulty. The government tried to help by offering to buy-back all these leases plus credit, but as mentioned, several companies decided to hold onto their lease, even when the tribe offered them another extraction site (not on sacred land) in good faith. So, essentially, the nutshell version is that a bunch of oil companies want to drill on sacred land with leases they never should have got in the first place, but they did, and so now the resource-strapped tribe has to fight to stop the drilling, and has been for over 30 years. My employer is the legal force on the tribe’s side of the case, and as a result, we’ve had the rare opportunity to gain the trust of the tribe and our managing attorney is extremely well respected. So, two attorneys from our office got invited to the tribe’s annual cultural days in Browning, MT. This is a pretty big deal. However, one of the attorneys is out of the office, so I was able to slip into the vacant spot. I hope the general story makes sense, as unfortunately I am very limited in how much more than that I can actually discuss either due to legal issues or out of respect for tribal culture and it’s traditions of not sharing information with outsiders.

So, on Tuesday morning Tristen and I were up and ready to make the 5 hour road trip up to the region (we were just co-pilots this time around).

On the way up we stopped and got some sandwiches out of a silo (seriously).

Most of the areas of the drive were gorgeous, but this mountainous area a bit north of Helena was especially memorable.

They were actually doing some blasting when we went through, but we lucked out and were going in the direction with no slow-down.

Once we got through that area (which included passing by Wolf Creek, the coincidence of which will make sense in a bit) it was on to open prairies with the Rocky Mountain Front looming in the distance.

We passed by some storms, but never got into them.

The attorney I was with (who was relatively new to the area themselves) had only been up here once before, and during that trip it was really cloudy and rainy, so this was a nice sightseeing trip for both of us.

Although Day 1 of the event was in Browning, our little cabins were actually in East Glacier, which is a gateway to Glacier National Park in the same way that Estes Park is to the Rocky Mountain National park, albeit smaller.

This area, especially with the clouds, reminded me of Alaska in a lot of ways.

Once in East Glacier we passed the “Dancing Bear” Inn which I figured Valentino would like. It was actually where the attorneys had stayed last time, but it was full this time around.

Instead we stayed at the “East Glacier Motel and Cabins” which turned out to be owned by the exact same people.

We each had our own cabins, though Tristen decided to take up 90% of our cabin for himself.

After dropping our stuff off we headed back to Browning for the cultural event. For aforementioned reasons I can”t discuss much, nor do I have any photos of it. But we got to participate in everything from traditional games, to building traditional toys, to learning how to identify native plants and pelts, to hearing tribal songs (drums and chants), and even a keynote address from the Chief in Blackfoot (which he was kind enough to repeat [in it’s entirety] in English as well). We learned a bit about the Blackfoot language, such as how it’s not uncommon for a person’s name to change up to four times in their life, and how place names also tend to evolve as the place evolves. We also heard the perspectives of tribal members who had been affected by the oil companies, and got their heartfelt thanks for the efforts thus far. While I was mostly on the edge of it all, I still got teary eyed at a couple points. It was very clear that these legal battles were of huge importance to the tribe. They even presented gifts to the attorney and other advocates (non-lawyer people from conservation groups, etc. that had also helped in the good fight). Since I wasn’t originally on the docket (and honestly hadn’t done much) there was no planned gift for me, but one of the tribal members noticed this and offered me a sweet-grass candle made in the area as a stand-in gift, it was really cool and touching. If you know anything about Native American culture, then you’ll know that gift giving and receiving is of huge cultural importance. Then, after all the cultural events, we had food and a live band. It was a good time and I got to meet a lot of really cool people, both tribal members and non-tribal members alike.

On the way back to East Glacier the cloud cover had mostly receded making for an amazing drive.

The mountains looked almost “ghost-like” in the distance.

East Glacier is pretty much nestled right up into the base of the mountains.

We made a quick pit-stop at our cabins to dress into some warmer clothes (mountain nights are quite cool).

And then we went on a stroll through the town, or I guess village is a better term.

As you can see it’s a bustling metropolis.

The one notable feature is the Glacier Park Lodge, which is kind of like East Glacier’s version of the Overlook Hotel.

We weren’t staying there (too pricey) but that didn’t stop us from checking it out.

We even stopped into their lounge and had a couple of beers – a nice end to a long day.

After that we headed back to our cabins since the next day was also going to be a big one as well!

The Badger-Two Medicine cultural days consist of two parts. First, the cultural event, and second a tribe-led hike into the sacred heart of Badger-Two Medicine itself, which is an extremely rare opportunity. Just to get to the area is a quite a drive, and then from there it was about a 10 mile round trip hike. So, we were up and on our way early, though we did stop and get a yummy breakfast, which included some amazing local cherry-raspberry pie (yes, pie for breakfast).

While waiting on a reporter to join us for the drive over to the carpool area in Browning, I found a map of East Glacier which kind of shows how small it is.

From there we drove back to Browning and met up with the group at the tribe’s community college.

It was a surprisingly nice building.

We had to meet up with people because the access road was ehm, a “4×4 Required” road I guess you could say, so we all sort of carpooled into more capable vehicles (which did not include our Dodge Dart rental). On the way out we got stuck waiting on a Bakken oil train, which I found ironic considering that I had spent a semester fighting Bakken oil trains. Everyone thought that the oil companies probably set this up on purpose (jokingly, if it wasn’t obvious).

From there it was a drive into the Badger-Two Medicine area itself.

The lower portions had moo-cows just roaming around, plus some wild horses (with foals!) that I couldn’t get a good photo of.

The hike consisted of two groups, a larger group on foot and a smaller group on horseback. Thanks to some litigation, you can no longer drive motorized vehicles (of any kind, including snowmobiles) into the “core” of Badger-Two Medicine, so the access road beyond a certain point becomes so rough that even a standard 4×4 would need to go pretty slow on it. However, one company retains vehicular access up to a radio tower that the federal government let the company install – without the tribes permission – but by and large, this road no longer gets by motor-vehicles used save for the very occasional maintenance trip up to the tower.

So, once we got to the point-of-no-vehicles we stopped and transfered to our feet or horse feet. Some people had actually offered to let us use a horse, but since I have never rode a horse, I was not about to hurt myself (or the horse) on sacred tribal land while trying to be an ambassador, so I went with my trusty feet.

The hike largely followed the (mostly) abandoned access road.

Most of the group were tribal members (of all ages), but there was a decent number of guests (such as myself) as well.

For some of the younger tribe members this was their first time out into Badger-Two Medicine, so you could feel their excitement.

It was very peaceful and serene out there.

Interesting Note: Chevron wanted to build an oil derrick right in the middle of this field, but they backed off thanks to conservationist resistance.

We even had a puppy joining us on the hike!

There were quite a few dead trees in the area, I thought it might be due to beetles but was told that it was from an older forest fire.

Our first stop was at “Kyro Craig Lake.”

A lot of people took advantage of this spot for some lunch, including the horses.

Here one of the tribal elders told us some of their origin stories for the land, animals, and their people – which again, out of respect for their culture I won’t repeat here, other than to say that I learned that the Blackfoot word for mountain literally means “pushed up” – which I though showcased an extraordinary understanding of geology for a word that is several thousand years old.

After our lesson on language, history, and modern culture a good chunk of the group headed back down, while a smaller cohort (including myself) continued heading up – it was a bit steeper from here on out. No sooner than we had gotten started when one of the tribal members pointed out some grizzly tracks.

The road/path sort of looped up and around the lake area.

You could tell that the road was no longer being actively maintained in several spots during the climb.

It was a wonderful day for hiking – you can see the lake where we had stopped in the distance.

The wind picked up a bit as we got higher, but thankfully it wasn’t anything crazy like my last hike.

The first sort of plateau we reached offered up some wonderful views.

A couple more people turned around there, but the rest of us kept trucking upward, including two horse buddies.

It was right about that time that things started getting really rocky, and there was this black moss on the rocks that almost made them look like lava rock.

Here you can see the radio tower that was put in without permission – which also turned out to be where we were heading.

Here is a view from the top, if you look at that “little” valley about 1/4 of the way from the left edge of the photo, and about 1/4 of the way up from the bottom, that is where the cars were parked and we had hiked from.

Since it was the first time up here for a lot of the younger tribal members, it was a pretty cool moment.

Here is a view facing the more southern areas of the Badger-Two Medicine region, with the Rocky Mountain Front in the distance.

And here’s another shot of the area we had hiked up, including the prairies beyond.

And here is a ground squirrel that decided it liked me.

Squirrel-camouflage

This is one of its buddies – there were so many up there!

Here is a shot that is looking towards Glacier National Park.

You can’t directly see it in that photo, but the oil lease site that had just been cancelled (and is now going to a court of appeals) is in the area of those mountaintops in the middle-right of the photo (not the distant snow-capped mountains, the closer grassy/rocky ones). Had the lease been approved (or if the cancellation is overturned) they would’ve ground the top of those mountains off, built access roads and pipelines, and put in derricks – which as you can imagine would kind of been a major detriment to land, never mind the fact that it is a sacred area.

After chilaxing at the top for a bit, we headed back down – it’s about 5 miles each way.

Our group got fairly spread out at this point, which made for some nice “solo” time to just enjoy the landscape.

Here is a shot where I turned around while walking back, you can see the tower up where we were.

And here is another shot like that, just from a bit further away.

Since I was now in “solo” mode, I actually got quite a bit ahead of everyone else and it was so, so quiet. I really liked it.

After that we all regrouped at our cars, then headed back into Browning, and from there the attorney and I started the 5 hour trek back to Bozeman (though thanks to some very like traffic and perhaps some speeding) we made it in about 4 hours and 15 minutes, though that still put me home around 9:30pm. The next day was a fairly normal Thursday (other than being quite tired from my busy two-day trip) but on Thursday night Tristen was pretty excited.

That was because he knew Meem was coming to visit us the next day!

We went in to work for a meeting in the morning, and then after that went to pick Meem up at the airport.

While Tristen does like to see his Grandma Meem, I think there are other things he likes about the Bozeman airport as well.

There is even a bear friend there.

After picking Meem up and getting her settled in for an afternoon nap, I headed back to work for the rest of the day, and then that evening Meem and I went out to eat (my first time doing so here outside of work).

We went to place called “The Garage” which – in addition to having really good food, had a crazy mirror-filled bathroom with a light-up logo that changed colors.

The next day (Saturday) we slept in just a little bit, and then of course had some cartoon time.

Meem (on the couch) looking much less enthused about cartoons than Tristen.

After that we got packed up to go see family (that I’ve never met before) up in Wolf Creek, MT. If you remember from earlier, I’d actually passed the Wolf Creek exit on Tuesday on my way up to Browning, so I knew generally where it was. Wolf Creek was thankfully only around 2 hours and 15 minutes away (rather than 5 to Browning). Tristen was ready for our second adventure of the week.

His backpack and truck are all ready to go!

So we all loaded up into Moose and hit the dusty trail (both figuratively and literally) to visit family. They had a very pretty home in a secluded area outside of Wolf Creek. The road to get to their house was kind of crazy, but still not as bad as the Fairy Lake Access Road.

Interestingly enough there was a real deer just down the hill from the fake deer.

All in all it was a great visit with good food (elk burgers) and company, since you never know how long-lost family reunions are going to go, I’d have to say this one was quite a success.

The one bad thing was that during the course of our visit I noticed that Tristen had been injured.

What we think happened is that Meem accidentally caught one of his nostrils on something during the drive. The strings are actually connected, so when one nostril got hooked, it snapped the string and pulled both sides out. We still aren’t sure exactly how it happened, other than it happened in the car sometime that day after we left. Tristen claims it happened in fierce battle with a Mountain Lion.

I think I was more freaked out about it than Tristen was. I had to call SB and ask what to do, which amounted to not a whole lot I could do at the moment. SB suggested clipping the strings to prevent further damage, but I wasn’t quite prepared to lop parts of Tristen off yet, so I let him be for the time being. To his credit he adopted his mustached persona very quickly.

After parting ways with our Montana family we headed over to the 7R Guest Ranch. Given that Wolf Creek seems to amount to a gas station with a few dirt roads around it, I was surprised that it even had a place to stay, but it did, and it turned out to be a cool little place!

When you first pull up to the motel area you are on the backside and it kind of looks like crap, but the front side is much more pretty.

They had a nice little area out by the creek that would be great for events.

Plus it was cool to stay right next to Wolf Creek itself, since, you know, we were in Wolf Creek.

They also had a restaurant/bar that is only open Friday – Sunday where one of the owners plays music and sings while the other seems to manage the food/drink side of things (the 7R is owned by a couple).

It was kind of a cool and fun little place, and he was actually pretty good – far above and beyond the worrisome “Is this person going to be bad enough to mess with my enjoyment of the food and drink” territory.

Meem and I had a second-dinner, which was a sampler plate that turned out to be massive. We also had some beers. Once again, a good end to a long day.

Back in our (tiny-but-clean) room Mustache Tristen was quick to claim the top bunk, and so I was delegated to the bottom bunk (by Mustache Tristen).

While Meem took the central bed.

It was kind of funny (in retrospect). Being down in a valley it was getting pretty cool in the room, so before we went to bed I turned on the baseboard heaters. The result was that by around 1am it had reached 150 degrees in the room. So Meem and I both woke up and turned the heater off, and then turned on the vent fan on the window a/c. It was so hot in there that even sans heat it remained warm until morning.

After a relatively bad night’s sleep (sleeping in a sauna isn’t actually that pleasant) we got up and around. Mustache Tristen for his part slept marvelously in the inferno.

After some spectacularly bad hotel coffee (from a machine that didn’t look to have been cleaned since the 1980s), we were on the road. Our destination was breakfast, we didn’t know where breakfast was yet, but that was the goal.

On the way to breakfast we stopped at the Gates of the Mountains area (so named by Lewis and Clark themselves) for few photos, Tristen used the opportunity to sun while Meem took photos with her fancy new camera.

After that we headed into Helena for breakfast at an IHOP – my first time going to one in a few years. We had tasty pancakes. After breakfast we headed the rest of the way back to home, where we made a pit-stop to drop some stuff off and freshen up, then we went back out to see some bears, and not just any bears, but Grizzly Bears!

The “Montana Grizzly Encounter” is actually a bear sanctuary for rescued grizzly bears that can’t be returned to the wild due to bad humans – but thankfully good humans found them. Meem was the one who had found the sanctuary – I knew of one further away, but wasn’t aware of this one which is only like 20-25 minutes from my house! So we had to go.

Interestingly enough, the first thing you see is not bears, but rather goats.

They had a jar inside that said you had to put a $1 in it if you asked or wondered about the goats being bear food, I thought that was pretty funny – though I surprisingly did not think of the goats being nom’d.

Once inside the viewing area, you get to watch the bears nom, chill, and play. It’s kind of cool, the sanctuary actually has seven bears right now, and they come out of their dens in “shifts” meaning that at any given time, two bears will be out for you to watch, which is cool because it means that if you visit more than once you can see multiple bears! Meem and I were fortunate enough to arrive right around a “shift change” so we got to see four bears!

When we first got there, it was Jake and Maggi who were out.

Jake and Maggie are both 10 years old, and they believe they are brother and sister. Maggie is the smaller (300lb) one playing with the ball, while Jake is the larger (800lb) one chilling in the pond. According to the staff: Maggi loves to run, swim and throw things. She even taught herself how to make a snowball and throw it! She has hit a few visitors in the viewing area with her snowballs! While Jake enjoys playing in the pond, laying in the grass sunning himself and of course playing with Maggi. Their favorite foods include elk, carrots, grapes, avocado, dried fruit, trail mix and ice cream.

They were being silly bears, Jake kept flipping himself over in the pond (he was floating on a log) while Maggie was noming her ball.

Along the viewing platform they had a few signs, I thought it was crazy that Grizzy Bears can run 35-40mph.

So yeah, don’t bother trying to outrun one, it will just engage their predator mode and they will nom you.

I also found it interesting that Grizzly Bears vary so much in weight, with Alaska bears generally being much heavier than their “southern” Grizzly counterparts.

Personally I am not sure I’d want to meet a 1500lb Grizzly Bear in the wild! As an even-crazier reference, Polar Bears (largest bears in the world) have been known to reach over 2000lbs and the heaviest on record was nearly 2500lbs!

Maggie really seemed to like eating the pond slime.

Eventually Maggie decided that it was time to go inside her den and get some noms, so she started pacing to let the keepers know she was ready to go. Meanwhile, Jake just kept chilaxing with his log.

However, Jake did eventually decide to come out of his pond, and he was much bigger than his sister.

Jake wondered around for a bit while Maggie grew impatient with her humans.

Eventually though her humans got the point and let them back inside, Maggie sprinted right in there while Jake meandered over there all cool-like.

While they were getting the next pair of bears ready to come out, a staff member hid treats around the area – stuff like syrup, yogurt, cheese, meat, and fruit. This allows the bears to keep their natural foraging instincts intact. The birds also knew what time it was because they swarmed, but only until the bears came out, then they scattered really quick.

The next pair of bears to come out were Brutus and Bella. Bella literally sprinted out of her den and started hunting down all the delicious syrup (she passed up the other treats – at first – in favor of the syrup noms).

Eventually Brutus lumbered up out of his den. Brutus gave no shits. Brutus is 900lbs and the alpha bear. Brutus noms whatever Brutus wants to nom.

Brutus is 14 years old, and as mentioned, 900lbs. He likes roughhousing with Sheena (another of the bears), swimming in his ponds (yep, his), foraging for treats (slowly), breaking stuff, and hamming it up for visitors. His favorite dinner is a large elk and avocado salad with huckleberry ice cream for desert! Bella is much younger, she is only 4 years old – thus the huge amounts of energy. Bella enjoys playing with logs, climbing things, swimming, and showing off. Bella loves syrup, I mean loves it.

Bella noming syrup.

While Bella frenetically foraged for noms, Brutus mozied about, tossing some boulders around like they were cotton balls.

Bella climbed the rocks as if they were nothing, putting to rest any safety I ever thought I’d find in a tree from a bear.

Fortunately – and this was heavily stressed by the sanctuary – bears are not aggressive creatures. In fact they are really just curious gentle giants. Most attacks occur because of people being stupid, not the bear being overly aggressive. In further support of this, my one encounter with a wild bear was not a hostile one at all.

I enjoyed how the birds would follow Brutus around, because the birds knew he would find noms, but the birds stayed just out of arm’s reach at all times. My guess is that if he had wanted to, Brutus would have nom’d the birds.

While Brutus and Bella just recently got to know each other (it takes awhile for the bears to acclimate to each other – and some never do, so a few of the bears can never be out together) they seemed to be good friends.

After hanging out for a few minutes, Bella returned to nom all the food she’d passed up in favor of the syrup.

Brutus meanwhile, took a nap.

After a bit more watching, Meem and I went on our way – but not without picking up some magnets (Brutus for me, Bella for Meem – and when SB and I go I’ll get another one!). We had to head to the grocery store to stock up for the week as my solo supplies aren’t really adequate for two people. While at the store we picked up one of those basic little sewing kits so I could get a needle. I then proceeded to spend nearly an hour trying to meticulously repair Mustache Tristen’s nose without clipping anything. While I am terrible with anything sewing, etc. the result was pretty good. I basically managed to “push” the strings back in, so it’s not really repaired, but it’s certainly better than dangling strings.

Tristen seemed pleased with it (though slightly bummed about the lack of mustache), and it should be good enough to last until “Dr. Rom” (SB) can come out with some more supplies and take a loot at it. One nostril is now ever-so-slightly smaller than the other one, but hey, I did my best and it’s still better than clipping them.

After Tristen’s most recent surgery (he has had many, silly boy) we chilled for the rest of the evening because the next day it was back to a normal work week for the two of us. Meem is still around, and will be for a bit longer, but during the weekdays she has to keep herself occupied. 😉

And that pretty much brings us up to the present! I just happened to notice that this post came in at almost 2x my “word quota” for check-ins, so maybe I should have busted it up into a “4” and a “4.5” – or maybe I should just stop kidding myself, oh well, it’s more adventurous this way!

Until next time,
-Taco

Bozeman Check-in #3 (The Summit)

June 21, 2016 by Taco

Greetings from Montana,

Things continue to go well, though they’ve slowed down a bit since last time, which in fairness I predicted they would. Of course slowing down has both its benefits and its drawbacks. On the work side, slowing down is a good because it gives me more breathing room and – quite frankly – more chances to learn. On the not-work side of things, slowing down is a bit more of a mixed-bag, since “slowness” can make the days creep along a good bit, especially on the weekends. So, what better a way to combat a slow weekend than to well, make it a not-slow weekend. The recent trend has been to get up early and get out into the wilderness, and since I’ve enjoyed that strategy so far, I decided to keep it up this past weekend – though I stepped things up a bit (literally).

After a relatively normal work week (though my boss did take me out for tacos on Friday, yiss) Tristen and I slept in on Saturday until about 8:30 and then got up and embraced the day!

Since it was Saturday it was also “long run” (for us) day, and since Tristen knew we were planning on hiking (and that dinosaurs live in the mountains) he was more than ready to get the run started.

I continued my progress with my Saturday runs. This time I made it a bit further down the gravel road, but still nowhere near the base of the Bridgers.

Once we were all exercised and coffee’d up, Tristen and I ran a few errands down in Bozeman, and then we were off to the “Sypes Canyon” hike. The cool thing about Sypes Canyon is that it’s only about a 11-12 minute drive from our house!

Tristen drove part of the way.

The trailhead itself is located back in a gravel road cul-de-sac in the appropriately titled “Sypes Canyon Subdivision” – though it’s more like a few houses in the middle of a field than what I traditionally think of as a subdivision. When I arrived I noticed a tent was set up and there were “Runners on the Road” signs. I had no idea which road they were talking about, but it turns out that there was a trail run on the Sypes Canyon trail that day, so at the start of my hike I had to dealt with a lot of foot traffic, but that tapered off fairly quickly as the day wore on.

The start of the Sypes Canyon trail is actually pretty “meh.” You start on an overgrown path between two privacy fences and with no trespassing signs everywhere and the smell of dog shit wafting through the breeze.

You then proceed through a wooded path, which is overgrown in a few spots, and swarming with bugs, and still smells like dog shit.

But then things start to improve quickly as you break away from the houses, bugs, and dog shit then start to head upwards.

The trail goes from a woody-swamp up to an exposed rock face fairly quickly.

The wildflowers were all over the place on this outcropping – I’ve loved how many wildflowers there are here.

Once you reach the top – or rather as close to the top of the outcropping as the trail gets – you get a nice view of the canyon beyond

One of these things is not like the others.

And from there you proceed back down into the woods again.

This second wooded portion is much more pleasant. It’s less weedy, more “foresty,” and has no dog shit.

After walking slowly upwards through the forest for a bit, the trail then opens up to a meadow with some great views of Gallatin Valley beyond.

After making a left you proceed upwards a bit more.

Before coming to the “overlook” which is the spot a lot of trail guides recommend as a turning around point if you’re just a casual hiker (which I guess I am, but with a serious propensity to act like a veteran hiker, regardless of the lack of said hiking ability).

It was gorgeous up on the overlook knoll, even Tristen liked it.

Here is a nice wide-angle shot of the overlook.

Of course I didn’t turn around, I was curious where the trail went from there! Turns out that deciding to continue onward was one of the better hiking decisions I’ve made.

The trail was smaller and less traveled up here, but the incline was (mostly) not that bad.

Tristen found himself a rock to survey his dominion.

Past Tristen’s rock the trail followed the ridge line for a bit.

When he couldn’t find a suitable rock further along the trail, Tristen opted for a tree instead (courtesy of Valentino’s tree-climbing lessons).

The wind had picked up a good bit up here, which was nice since it was a hot day.

Eventually the trail curves around the backside of one of the mountains.

This part was actually steeper than it looks.

But the views continued to impress.

Once you reach the “top” (of this smaller mountain) there is a cairn to mark the summit. Tristen and I added our own rock to it.

Once you’re at the cairn, the trail continues upwards and back towards the mountain. You quickly come to a junction (with another cairn) where if you go left you continue up into the 24 mile long Bridger Ride trail, or if you go right you go down to the M Trail. We continued up past the junction (on the longer trail) for just a short bit because there were two people for the race stationed at the crossroads. Tristen and I took this post-junction solitude as an opportunity to go wee on this tree, since I figured that going wee at the highest altitude for the day was manlies.

At this point we decided to go ahead and turn around and head back down.

On the way back I noticed that most of the junctions had little pieces of ribbon on them. I’d actually noticed these on the way up, but I hadn’t paid much attention to them, but on the way down I realized that they were directing the trail runners for the race that day. I especially like the bottle cap handing by a ribbon.

As I went down and neared the end of the trail, I noticed this tree growing out of the side of that first rocky outcropping. It sort of made me wonder why we don’t associate trees with resilience, because I mean seriously.

That night my legs were hurting me the worst they had so far since coming to Montana, so I took some ibuprofen – which doesn’t really help my legs but it helps the other soreness – and chilled for the evening. That said, the chilling didn’t last long because the next day I had an even bigger hike planned – the goal, Sacagawea Peak which at 9,665ft is the highest peak in the Bridger Mountains.

[Historical Side Note: If you’re really keen eyed, you’ll notice that “Sacagawea” is also sometimes spelled with an “j” i.e., “Sacajawea.” Based on what I’ve read, the “g” is actually the more accurate of the two spellings in regards to her Lemhi Shoshone name. Also, there is another peak named after her in Oregon, though this Oregonian peak is spelled with the “j.”]

The thing is, it takes quite a while just to get the trailhead. So we were on the road by 9:30am on Sunday.

Of course it’s not as simple as driving the nice fancy highway all the way to the summit. Heck, there’s not even a road to the summit period, unlike Pike’s Peak. Instead you drive out to what is the called the “Fairy Lake” access road – so titled because it leads to a glacial lake called – you guessed it – Fairy Lake. There is a campground up by the lake, and several trailheads. That said, you have to get to that area first, which is about 7 miles off the main road on a dirt/gravel/rock road.

In fact this road is closed, or partially closed, for most of the year due to snow. So, if you want to hike up by the lake (or beyond) then you have to go as far as the road will take you – anywhere between 0 and 7 miles – and then park and hike the rest of the way. Fortunately for me the last little jaunt had just opened up just the week prior, so I was able to drive all the way to just outside of the the campground area (which itself didn’t open until July 1st).

Prior to the trip, I’d been warned multiple times about the access road, and all the Forest Service stuff says that a “High Clearance Vehicle” is strongly recommended and that the “Road Conditions Vary Significantly.” Further, people online were talking about how they got flat tires or bent their rims (or worse) on the road. Well, Moose is a Toyota Corolla, not a high clearance vehicle by any means. But, I am stubborn and am no stranger to crappy gravel roads.

In fairness, there were a few areas of the road that were pretty bad, but I was in no hurry, so Moose and I took it slow and made it through (both out and back) just fine. We just pulled over when the 4x4s came by, and took the areas that were less of a road and more of a pile of rocks very slowly. It took me about 45 minutes just go to 7 miles. My guess is that a lot of the people having problems failed to understand that you should probably not drive your Audi 30mph over a rock jutting 6″ into the air (such people exist, as you probably well know).

I didn’t get any photos of the really bad areas, because I was a bit more concerned about driving than I was taking pictures, but you can still get the general idea that this wasn’t your normal paved park road.

But, after passing through the various stages of the road – which ranged from normal grave, to mud pits, to sheet rock – we arrived at the lower campground parking, and it looked like a bear had eaten part of the sign.

Tristen was rearing to go, as he really likes his mountains. I noticed a few other sedans in the parking lot, but I’d say 95% of the cars were 4x4s. I had gotten there early enough (both in the day and the season) that the parking lot was maybe 1/10 of the way full at that point.

It was MUCH cooler up there, as the lake itself is already at about 7,500ft.

There is a Fairy Lake trail, which is swarmed with kids and is fairly easy, and then there are also the more difficult trails. You can see the smaller sign marking the route to Sacagawea Pass off to the right of the Fairy Lake trailhead sign in the photo above. Once we got started on that trail we briefly branched off for a photo of Fairy Lake (taken from up above, away from the children dotting the lake trail).

From there it was deep into the woods and up and up.

It didn’t take long before I encountered some snow, and here I was in my tennis shoes, shorts, and t-shirt. I really am going to have to get better gear if I move west. Though hiking up Atalaya in the middle of winter in office shoes is still kind of a personal achievement in my book.

Of course as SB will remember from Mt. Rainer, it’s quite possible to be standing in snow while on the mountain but still quite warm due to all your exertion from hiking. It’s weird.

Being a bonafide mountain trail, it was pretty steep in parts and the ledge was not very far away.

Eventually the trail sort of just got consumed by the snow (as I mentioned, this was still early in the season).

One advantage to being early in the season was the lack of people – the trail to the summit was not busy, AT ALL. The drawback was that since there were no people and the snow covered the trail, I had to sort of figure things out on my own.

The good news is that there were foot tracks in the snow, the bad news is that that some of them lead absolutely nowhere.

Eventually though Trisen and I found our way up to a plateau.

And from there we promptly lost the trail again. So, we took matters into our own hands and starting climb up the rocks. No, I don’t mean hiking up the rocks – there was no trail here, I legitimately mean climbing up the rocks.

And here is the same view with the background included for more visual reference.

I actually was doing pretty well – considering I had no gear and was in tennis shoes. Sure, I cut my hands up and lost my water bottle (which I recovered – no littering for me) and broke my sunglasses – lol – but I survived. I made it all the way up to a boulder – seen below – and then got stuck.

Notice the boulder in the upper middle of the photo.

It was about that time that I stopped taking photos and started to realize that I’d actually got myself in a pretty dangerous situation. So, I climbed down a bit (actually it was more of a semi-controlled slide) and rerouted myself, and then finally found the trail again. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very nervous for about 15 minutes.

In hindsight it was probably a really dumb and dangerous thing to do, but I did it and I made it to the trail, whereas the other folks who had been near me on the hike had simply turned around.

At the top of our hard-won ridge (which is actually the “saddle” between Hardscrabble Peak and Sacagawea Peak) was a yet another cairn, which Tristen I put a rock on while trying not to get blown away by the wind. Once you crested the ridge, it was like getting hit by a wall of wind – I later found out that the winds were around 30mph that day, and on top of the chilly air it made it quite cold up there (my hands went numb by the end of it – see note about gear above). It made keeping Tristen in one place quite difficult – not that that isn’t hard already.

From the cairn you then follow the “saddle” upwards towards the summit.

Here is a view looking back towards the cairn, you can see the rocks I climbed up in the right of the photo.

Yes seriously, those rocks.

The last little jaunt to the summit was quite steep.

And this is what it looked like if you looked down during the climb.

But, at long last, Tristen and I made it to the summit – 9,665ft up.

Behold, King Tristen, Son of Taco, Lord of the Bridger Mountains, Master of all his eyes can see.

Tristen was pretty ecstatic that we made it to the summit.

Before two long some mountain goats noticed us, or rather, Tristen noticed them and then they noticed us.

Look closely, the alpha goat is there.

Then the goats started moving in.

So we decided to give them some space, and by we I mean “I” – because Tristen wanted to eat them. The one person I met up there (who was decked out in proper gear) was going down and he told me they were aggressive, but I had a white shirt on so I can’t help but wonder if the goats though I was also a goat – who happened to carrying a T-Rex, which as showcased by Jurassic Park, love eating goats.

After that we started heading back down, and rather than go the rocky route (yeeeeeah, no), we used our altitude to spot a much-longer, but more relaxed route through a huge snow bank (though we ended up falling quite a bit on the way down, though falling on snow > falling off a rock face). Which took us back down to the basin, which is where this photo was taken. The people in the photo had just turned around and had asked me how I’d gotten up to the summit, I don’t think they liked my answer because they kept walking down, lol.

On the way back I noticed some little melt-streams I hadn’t noticed on the way up (since I was preoccupied with finding the trail).

Further on the way down I encountered more people since it was later in the day, but by and large the trail still wasn’t very busy.

And that lack of business is probably why I encountered a bear. Yup. I figured it would happen sooner or later, and lo’ and behold’ it happened on my descent from the summit and about 25 miles from civilization. It was a black bear (which can be brown, as an FYI – and this one was). I “knew” it wasn’t a Grizzly because I’d taken a “Bear Safety Course” through the Forest Service and scored 93% on it. So I guess you could say I was 93% sure it wasn’t a Grizzly. Fortunately, we both saw each other well in advance – I’d say about 40 yards apart. It stood up on its back legs to smell me and look at me, and I then realized how big it was, haha (it was slightly less funny in the moment). Fortunately I knew that none of what it was doing was aggressive, so I started talking to it (not screaming – just talking loudly) and we stared at each other for 30 seconds or so, then it snorted it me and I clapped at it, then we went our separate ways. I had my bear spray on me, but I didn’t really want to use it since I was in the bear’s home, and luckily I think the two of us were much more curious in looking at each other than we were getting closer to each other. But still, it was a pretty crazy experience! I’m glad I had read up on how to handle those kinds of situations without anyone (human or bear) feeling too threatened.

Sadly I have no photos to offer as proof, because I was more concerned with talking to my bear-friend so he wouldn’t eat me than I was of whipping out my phone and taking photos. Unlike those dumbasses who get killed while taking selfies, I’m a bit higher up the Darwinian ladder.

After our manlies hike and bear-friend encounter, Tristen and I stopped above Fairy Lake for an afternoon snack and some water.

Then we headed the rest of the way down the trail and back to the parking lot, which had a lot more cars in it now. After getting the rocks out of our shoes, Tristen and I were off on the access road again.

Tristen was quite adamant that I let him drive this time.

And he continued wanting to drive even once we were back on the highway.

At one point on the way home we saw another bear! This one ran across the road and then stopped to eat some berries or something.

Look just to the left of the road in the middle of the photo.

I didn’t get a good look at this bear, so I don’t know how large it was, but it was still big enough that when I saw it run across the road from a good distance away there was no doubt as to what it was.

After that the rest of the drive home was uneventful, which was kind of nice.

Sacagawea Peak in the distance, as seen from our house. “Manries.”

Once back home we mended our rock-climbing wounds (or rather I did, Tristen’s skin protected him).

And then went about trying (but failing) to repair my sunglasses.

And then we did a bunch of mundane stuff, like dishes and laundry. Though I think I might have went overboard on the dish soap.

After that we chilled for the rest of Sunday evening. Then, on Monday morning we got up and around like normal, except we’re still running outside since the treadmill is broken. While it was still pretty chilly during my run – about 42 degrees – I did get to see a hot-air balloon (and a plane, which I didn’t even notice when I took the photo).

I’ve seen a hot air balloon in that vicinity several times now, I don’t know if its the same person or not (maybe it’s a tour), but either way they tend to be out fairly early (before 7am).

When I made it back home my doorbunny was next to the fence.

And then later once I was ready for work, my doorbunny was waiting under Moose for me.

Doorbunny seen here in a mid-scratch.

And then I left for work! I have some exciting stuff coming up this week, mostly prominently a two-day work trip to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation and then the arrival of Meem on Friday. But, I’ll save that for an upcoming check-in since I’ve grossly exceeded my word count on this one! Still, it’s hard not to share all the wonderful hiking Tristen and I have been doing, especially when you hike to the summit of a mountain (especially the highest mountain in a range – as Tristen wants me to remind you).

Until next time,
-Taco

Bozeman Check-in #6 (Montana Life)

Bozeman Check-in #5 (Yellowstone)

The Odd Things – Vaseline Lip Therapy

Bozeman Check-in #4 (Ambassadors, Meem, & Bears)

Bozeman Check-in #3 (The Summit)

Search all of Dinosaur Bear

Disclaimer:

Subscribe