So like I said, it rained all last night and into the morning. Another pretty cold night as well, made a little colder by the dampness. Thankfully, our tent is still dry. Thanks God! We're still getting a little cold from the ground up, so we bought a sleeping bag today to put under us to keep us warm from the bottom. It should do the trick.
Since it was raining this morning, we decided to jump in the Jeep and head out to see what we could see. As we were traveling, we passed less than 10 feet from and elk getting ready to cross the road. It had to stop so it didn't hit us. It was quick, but very cool. It had a radio tracking collar, so I guess the naturalists are studying it.
We got to a crossroads and decided to head down to Jackson Hole, WY to check out the town. It's definitely a tourist town, but we went to say we saw it. We walked through a few shops, and explored a little bit. They did have a very neat arch in the town square made out of elk antlers. The National Elk Refuge is right by Jackson, and every spring, after the bull elk shed their antlers, the boy scouts pick them up and they auction them off in the town square. They used a lot to build these arches.
They also have a stage coach tour you can take around the town. We didn't take one, but Kate posed for a pic.
We started to make our way back to the campsite when we noticed a bunch of cars pulled off the side of the road ahead. In these parts, that can mean only one thing: wildlife sighting. We were pretty excited when we realized that a small herd of buffalo were making their way down the side of the road. We were less than 30 feet from them. They are massive animals, and we were very excited to see them roaming free.
After a quick lunch, we went down to the marina and rented a canoe. We thought we would paddle around the lake for a couple of hours to see if we could spot any animals. After about 30 minutes, we realized that neither of us could paddle that long, so we called it after an hour. It was great to see the mountains from the water though.
As we were leaving the marina, an adorable little girl asked us if we liked her black lab puppy, Charlie. When we said yes, a conversation ensued where we learned that she had rocks in her pockets, a blue raft and a pine cone garden. I feel that we would have learned much more had we been able to talk to her longer. She was great!
It's about 3:00 now. We're going to go to a worship service at 5:30, then have some grilled cheese and soup for supper. We finally ate all the chicken we cooked in Kansas last night, which is very exciting to me. After supper, we are going to take showers (the first since Thursday) and do some laundry in preparation for the trip to Yellowstone. We leave for Yellowstone tomorrow morning, and I'm not sure if we'll be able to post or not. Hopefully we can find a place.
Until then...Happy Father's Day to all you dad's!
Sounds awesome. The Buffalo tastes great, I would eat some every opportunity you get. I can't remember if you have a camping pad or air mattress, but Walmart has a blue closed cell foam one for less than $10 each and they will keep you warmer than the extra sleeping bag under you. If I had to pick between a sleeping bag at all or a "wussy" mat I'd pick the latter since it acts as a barrier between the 98deg sac of water known as a body and the 50deg giant heat sink known as the ground. I figure you know best since you are living it, but I thought I'd mention it just in case. I bet the little girl so excited to share about her rocks would love to know she shared it all the way to Midland NC. Keep having fun and posting.
ReplyDeleteMelissa said rocks in her pocket or "tots" in her pocket.
ReplyDelete