White Water Rafting

We went to white water rafting with full van of Asians. Half of them were from housekeeping what was kinda fun. But anyway, white water rafting was  awesome and fun. Hopefully we will do it again.

Natural Hot Tub

     Today we went on a hike through a meadows which some parts looked like we were walking on a human brain, so I renamed it The Brain of a Yellowstone. It was really weird, squishy and soggy with brain like structure.  Also it was fun to watch all the Asians in their fancy clothes as they were going through some swamps, and another fun thing happen on the hike. We had to jump through a little stream, our Asians friends were little bit scared so our guide ask if they want a piggy ride on her back. They did not wanted, too bad, it would be hilarious. Also our guide fell in to a mud pond, deep to her hip, luckily only one of her legs got in there so she was able to climb out of there just by her own help.
 
 After this fun hike we headed to the secret swimming area. It was on the Fire Hole river by some hot pools and geyser runoff. The water was kinda cold on me so I did not go swim, but I stayed on one sweet spot on the river. It was right bellow the one geyser with its runoff so when all the hot water got to the cold river water it made it feel so good. Like a natural Hot Tub. Interesting thing was that the water, don't know if it was the geyser water or the river water, changed colors of our wedding rings. We stayed there for two hours and then we went home, extremely relaxed and ready to take a nap.
    It was day well spent.

    For those ho did not see our ring before they have this awesome color, they were silver. Now the color is fading away, bummer.

                                                           Have a good day everyone!

Journey Through the Tetons

We got a surprise call from Aunt Linda just before our weekend started. She was going to be in an art festival in Jackson Hole. We decided to drive down for our Saturday. We stopped in Teton National Park and went to the visitor center. We also had a great drive just looking for moose, and seeing the mountains.

When we got to Jackson, we got coffee, and explored the town trying to find Miller Park/ Aunt Linda. We had a great time at the art fair, Linda's stuff was awesome as usual. Roman Bought a journal made from an old book from the Journal Ladies. It has a Ranger on the front, and some of the original pages still in it.

We shopped around a bit, got a patch for roman and a bumper sticker for the car. We went to a real, big store too.... Kmart. now we have sheets that aren't accidentally dyed pink, and some shampoo and other necessities.

The drive back was great too, we listened to an audio guide cassette of Teton National Park. It was interesting and had funny background music.

and another adventure tomorrow....

'The Token American'

Lately we've been hanging out with or Slovenian friends. We go to the rec hall in the evenings to play whatever the 'sport du jour' is. Its awesome being 'the token American' in the group. The teams somehow divided into 'Europe + me' vs. 'Asia'. This is pretty much the first positive experience I've had playing team sports with my peers. No flashbacks to high school gym. Here are some things ive learned about playing sports with globally aware participants.

1. all girls scream if a ball is hurling towards their face. It doesn't matter where you're from or what language you speak.

2. Unamerican boys dont yell at you if you miss, they say things like "try it again" or something else encouraging.

3. Everyone was laughing all the time

4. No one really kept score, or paid close attention to the rules. 

5. We were all still friends at the end of the game, and no one got injured.

Back country mosquito killin'

     Thursday, after work we went on our back country camping by Shoshoni lake. Destination was 9 miles far from our dorm. First day we walked only six miles because we were going to stay our first night at camp site named 8G1. That camp site was covered with mosquitoes, and they were vicious, and they were in  big hordes. We did used our bug spray, which by the way, we almost forgot. It was working for a while but they were still around our heads. We ate some noodles prepared with our new Jet-boil, and we went to the bed.

     Next morning after delicious breakfast consisted with oatmeal and hot chocolate/coffee we hit the trail once again, but just for a two miles or so. We had to cross some stream which Em crossed on her feet and I double jumped across with a help of a stone. So Em had her shoes wet and I did not. Yet. Next stream we had to cross Em crossed it on fallen trees. I tried to do the same but I accidentally jumped to the mud deep to my ankles, luckily only one foot got the full hit. Now we both marked from our trip we went on. The map we got from rangers was little bit confusing so we ended up in a wrong camping site, which we did not know right away because it was place with beach and bear proof food lockers. We built our tent and stayed there for a while, we went to see a geyser basin which was pretty close to our fake campsite. We saw a geyser go off, what looked pretty nice.

After we got back and after observation of the surrounding with binoculars we decided to go back a little bit and tried to go another way what showed up as a best idea. Finally we found our right campsite which was way nicer and even had a benches and some sort of a toilet. After we built our tent and bear proofed our backpacks we went to the beach. It was a wonderful feeling to washed our faces and hair in cold water of Shoshoni Lake. Beautiful place to stay! Too bad the weather turned to the cloudy and windy-one. Well we had to move our tent to the more sheltered place so we did not have to hold its sides so it would not collapse. After evening full of rain and wind, night was not really different, accept the wind stopped, but the tent was and still is waterproof so we were dry and could sleep without any worrying. Awesome.

      Morning wasn't what we hoped for. It was cloudy. So we ate our breakfast, packed our wet stuff, got some water from lake by using our new awesome water filter which I did not see before in my whole life.,and went on our 9 miles long hike home. The only advantage of cloudy weather was that it  wasn't hot. Mosquitoes were our company the whole way home. So many mosquito bites. We left our campsite around 8.30 and we got back at like 1.30. Pretty good time I think. We put all our wet clothes to the washer, shoes and sleeping bags to the car and took a shower. My overall feelings after this back country camping were really good. Good way to spend some time away from all the craziness. 
Here some photo's. 

Mt Washburn Hike

On our Saturday, I made Roman get up early to go on a hike. We drove the long way to Mt Washburn through Hayden Valley. I wanted to see if we could spot any wildlife besides buffalo and this valley is popular with bears. Buffalo, there were many, this is also where they come to "Rut" in July- its their mating season. We did see three bears, I think they were black bears, but they were really far away so its not certain.

We started up Mt Washburn  from Dunnraven pass. Its 6 miles round trip. The mountain was covered in wild flowers, as opposed to snow when we were here last. It was a great hike, every turn had a vista point. Theres a fire watchtower at the top where a ranger lives. I think that would be pretty neat to live on a mountain peak.

West Yellowstone

Today, since my relief person quit, I went in to work for a few hours while Roman got some beauty sleep. I don't mind the extra hours, and I would have been waiting around doing nothing anyway.

After work, Roman and I drove to West Yellowstone- specifically to mail a package to Slovakia. We also took advantage of our free pass to the Bear and Wolf Center. It was really cool! we got to see grizzlies and wolves and there were exhibits about them.

 

We stuck around for the feeding of the wolves. Today the dumped a bunch of donated rainbow trout into the stream in the wolf pen. Then we got to see the wolves catch the fish. It was really cool!

We also played some mini golf and had lunch. We even got some cherries at the produce stand.

The Fourth Of July

This fourth was a strange one, no fireworks, hanging out on the lake, or making hot dogs over a fire. This fourth of July was way more interesting. I was the minority in our group, trying to explain what and why we have the fourth of July. Roman, our three Slovenian friends, and Terrance (from Singapore) were so excited because the Employee dining room was making a special meal: steaks, watermellon, strawberry shortcake, corn on the cob, and root beer. The boys of course, were silently enjoying their steaks while the girls were so surprised they were eating watermelon in the USA.

Apparently, watermelon is their favorite fruit, and they didn't think we would have it here. I ate too much corn and too many strawberries. Its rare that we have fresh fruit and veggies in the EDR. After filling up, we headed down to the "parade". It was a very sad parade that lasted one minute, one second on Terrances video. There were 2 horses, a fire truck, and the Xanterra recycling team. Lucky for us, they had icecream after the parade at the ranger station! yummy

Roman and I also finished this puzzle. We've been working on it for about a week. Its cool because it has everything yellowstone in it.

Working the past few days were interesting. I hear all the good stories in the office because I'm there most of the day. about 1/4th of the kitchen staff called in sick on the fourth.... I think they came down with a severe case of the "fourth of July paydays". The 5th was worse because apparently Rangers had to get involved that night, some were in jail, some had left the park permanently, and most were just hung over, and late.

pictures to come later.....

Friday Taco bus, Saturday hike and Monday patches

     Friday was trip day. We had planed to go to the West Yellowstone to mail a package for my family and do some shopping. Our Slovenians friends Marko and Mateja joined us. They are pretty funny. Marko wanted to get a hair cut but unfortunately he had to scheduled his visit. And we did not make it to the West Yellowstone on time, post office was closed, so Em will have to go there sometime after she finishes at work. We had dinner there too, way better dinner than we could ever have here at EDR. We went to the Taco Bus for our Mexican dinner. Very good dinner! Everybody had happy tummies.

     On Saturday we joined couple of employees and headed out for a hike. Slough Creek is the name of the trail. It was a really nice 10 mile hike. We did not see many animals, just one bison and hundreds of prairie dogs and two marmots.We saw some Pronghorn on the drive back to Old Faithful.




  Today after work went to finished our last final task which was separating us from Junior Ranger Patch. We had to time Old Faithful`s eruption and by that predict when its gonna go off  again. While we have been waiting for 'Old champ' Faithful we saw Beehive geyser go off. Pretty exciting! So our prediction was 7: 01. It actually went off at 7: 06, sooo we are good. Now we have our patches and we are deciding where to put them! Hope you had a splendidliocious day folks!