Guest guest Posted October 1, 2003 Report Share Posted October 1, 2003 Thee continuing Saga of Fraggle on his travels to thee Hinterlands Beyond thee Hills of thee EastBay and thee strange and Curious peoples he meets. So, when last i left ya'll, i had mentioned that on monday last week, we were traveling across montana. We reached Livingston, on the Yellowstone River, and looked in vain for Peter Fonda er some other celeb..though, that dog wandering down RTE 89 did look rather familiar.. the north way into yellowstone was pretty nice, not a ton of people. I've been thru the east and west entrances, and, those are hella more cramped with bustling folks, screaming kidlets, and shops specializing in plastic jackalope chotskis... but, the north entrance was a bit more lo-key...it follows the yellowstone river, and there was hardly any auto traffic on it at all..i assume tho during the summer months its probbaly wall to wall winebagos just like the other roads.. gardiner was a small little town, and we got to see more of it then we had planned, do to our friend and yers, ROAD CONSTRUCTION!... i swear, it seemed like every 3rd mile of our entire trip was bracketed with those orange cones or barrels...ya would think with all those folks working on the roads the unemployment rate would be a fwe points lower..then again, didn't see a whole lot of people actually working..just lots of orange cones...maybe its a sneaky first wave invasion force from the planet Roadconstructious...those cones and barrels are really just spray painted Daleks...... anyways...after being stuck sittin still fer an hour, and having a long conversation with the woman with the "Slow" sign..really...she was pretty pleasant and funny...finally the Holy Grail of American national parks, Yellowstone! and, as soon as we crossed through into the park, boom, their was a herd of pronghorns lazily crossing the road..fastest land mammal in north america my paw....heh heh ...then, immediately afterwards, like 40 yds further down the road, boom, there were elk....turn a corner, and boom, a herd of bighorn sheep sitting in the road...maybe the road construction crew further back could have hired them... Yellowstone is a grand park, and i hadn't been there in years..a lot of the park still bears the scars left by the fires of 88..but, after 15 yrs, its all been covered by new firs and spruce... We spent 2 days there, and, no where near enough time.... of course we did all the "main E ticket attractions", like Old Faithful and all that...i also overhead a conversation at the geyser from some folks who thought yellowstone wasn't *vegas* enough, and they thought it would all be improved if they glassed in old faithful, so folks good get closer of course... *non-plussed expression* moving right along... We had incredible timing there, as we waited less then a minute for all the geysers to blow while we were there..at old faithful we just walked up, tons of people standing around, carrie sat down, and immediately it began to shoot off into the air..and that set the tone..every geyser we walked up to, decided to dance and show fer us, like they were happy to see us er something *head swells* it was carrie's first trip to the park, and she enjoyed herself immensely, she had never seen a geyser, mud pot er fumerole before(tho, she insisted on calling them teapots).. After a bit of a search, we discovered an empty campground. I dug out the tent(hurrah! i didn't leave it behind!), and had dinner...tofu pups, and some sort of soymeat analog on bread we had lugged around since Seattle...well, at least our jaws got lotsa exercise! we later wandered down to a nearby meadow..the place was covered with elk and bison...we sat and watched the sunset over a babbling brook, bats came out and swooped over the noisy little watercourse, snatchin up insects..it was great..heading back to the camp, about 10 yds away, a miniscule elk, maybe the size of a mastadon, stepped out of the trees... i turned to tell carrie to be calm, don't look it in the eye, and just to walk..and saw i was addressin a puff of smoke..i look ahead, and carrie is obviously showing me her jesse owens impression.....I turn to the elk, we both shrug, and i head back to camp, encourage carrie to get out of the car..and we sit and watch the stars... ya don't get those in oakland by the way...neither elk nor stars..... we also heard a wolf call from..somewhere..at first i thought it might be a coyote, but it didn't have that shrill character to it, nor the "yip yip yip" to it..it went on ferever it seemed... *grin* well, after mr elk had his chuckles, he apparantly went and told all his buddies..and they had a good laugh as well..as a matter of fact, they did laughed all nite long in reality, i guess it was elk mating season, and the bulls were happily proclaiming that "des cows be mine!"..they big ungulants bugled all evening, all night, through the next morning..non-stop..it seemed like there were hundreds of em, all around us, everywhere... me, i can sleep through a train wreck i woke up, and happily stretched my arms out, looked over at carrie with a silly grin on my face, which whithered like a petunia in death valley..apparantly see hadn't slept all nite..at all... whoops but, she got out of the tent, and we got down to seeing more yellowstone wot can i say..it was great, we went all over..and still didn't have enough time.... sadly though, we had to bid farewell and headed down to the Grand Tetons now, while yellowstone is easy to see by auto, tetons aren't...all the good stuff is a good hike back into the hinterlands unfortunately, we had walked all over yellowstone, carrie was still ill, and just was not up to more hoofin it so, we headed thru and down to Jackson..after being followed by the cops through town, and finding absolutely to eat, we went back to look fer a place to camp in the tetons..no dice....everything was either closed er full.... Well, that left us with a. going into jackson again b. carrying onward in case ya have never been to jackson..picture vail colorado, and triple all the prices..a room in a shoebox costs a ransom....so, we headed out with the sun setting, we drove off through wyoming, into the wind river country..lookin fer somewhere to lay our weary heads... the first tiny towns almost looked ok, til we saw all the bambi's lying in the back of trucks, volkswagens, tricycles, etc... finally found a hotel in lander wyoming, even if the folks runnin the place didn't seem to pleased with our sorry lil ol be-draggled selves... wednesday dawned warm and sunny...and, once again, we hit the road... not much more to write about in wyoming, except fer jeffrey's bistro in laramie, and the library brewpub in the same town..yum yum so ends this excerpt. next, we learn of the strange habits of the people of Denver Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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