Unplugged

For dinner last night I grabbed take out from a very Carraba-esque restaurant right across the parking lot from the hotel.  If we didn’t have the dogs it would have been a nice place to sit down and eat.  While I was waiting for the food to come out I slammed a beer at the bar while watching the Phillies finally win a game against the Yankees.

Driving west does all sorts of strange things to you because of the time change.  I woke up at 5 am Mountain Time.  After walking the dogs I went down and used the hotel fitness room for a half hour or so. While I was on the treadmill I tried to actually watch some of the World Cup.  I made it through about 10 minutes of the Argentina / Korea game before I couldn’t tolerate it.  It’s so damn boring plus the f’ing natives blowing those horns incessantly during the match is annoying beyond description.

Billings seems to be an expensive area.  Out hotel room was over $100 with the AAA rate. Yea it was a nice place but not $107 before taxes nice. I mean wtf, it was a Wednesday night.  Gas was expensive as well, in the $2.90’s.  We expected gas to be dirt cheap since we saw no less than three refineries in the Billings area.

We loaded up the van and headed out.  I still hadn’t had a chance to revisit the power lock/seat issue.  I wanted to pick up a spare relay to help in my testing but after stopping at 3 different places and striking out I decided I will continue my troubleshooting without one.  For now I am the full time driver and we do a lot of door locking and unlocking by hand.

The drive to Yellowstone was EXTREMELY windy.  I couldn’t believe just hard it was blowing.  Several times a cross wind blew me across the center line.  Early on in the drive Ali and I were impressed by the huge, snow covered mountains in the distance.  It just seemed surreal to see snow in mid-June.  Little did we know just how surreal things were yet to come.

As we got closer and closer to the park it got colder and colder.  As we got near Ali said she thought she saw snow.  At first I didn’t notice.  Soon you couldn’t miss it.  We had freaking snow flurries coming down.  As we got to the shack to pay our $25 entry fee the POSSIBLE ICY ROADS sign left no doubt that we indeed were experiencing winter in June.

The deeper into the park we got the more it felt like Christmas.  Cripes they had some roads covered in cinders.  We drove through many steady periods of snow, luckily the road was warm enough that it didn’t stick.  There was plenty of snow on the ground however.  Neither of our dogs have ever seen/felt snow.  We saw one pull off area that had a nice mound of it so we stopped and let the dogs check it out.

Ali was sure Nicki would hate snow.  Back in Florida Nicki generally dislikes going outside on cold days.  To our surprise she seemed to have no problem with the snow and was happy to walk around on it.  In fact the dogs were thrilled to be out in the cold temps with snow coming down.  Ali and I on the other hand were not.  With a strong wind blowing and neither of us having anything close to suitable clothing, the air felt like icy daggers as it hit your body.  It wasn’t pleasant. 

On the way in we found an open grassy area that looked good for the dogs.  When we got out we saw signs maybe 50 feet off the road indicating it was a bear area.  Well let me tell you, bears create tremendous piles of shit.  I am talking volleyball diameter piles of shit and they were everywhere.  You could also see bear prints in the mud very easily.  Of course the dogs found all of this excrement fascinating and Nicki was happy to add to it.

We then headed to our lodging for the day.  Ali booked this way ahead of time and it’s a good thing she did, supposedly there are no rooms available ANYWHERE in Yellowstone right now.  We actually aren’t in a hotel, we are in a duplex cabin.  It’s small but quaint.  Thank goodness the heat works.

After unpacking it was still only mid-afternoon so we decided to venture out to Old Faithful which was almost 40 miles away.  Yellowstone is HUGE.  The main loop that goes around the park is something like 100 miles long.

On our way there we made a ton of stops to look at stuff.  We saw numerous steam vents in the ground that pumped out steam like a locomotive.  We saw various wildlife including some sort of deer/anteloupe, elk/caribou and buffalo.  There were so many awe inspiring vistas, it just made you appreciate just how beautiful parts of our planet can be.

We saw some people whose sanity we questioned like the ones on motorcycles and even bicycles.  They had to be frozen solid.

Eventually we got to Old Faithful.  We timed it pretty well, by the time we grabbed gas, coffee and a hot chocolate we only had about 15 minutes until the geyser was due to erupt again. (happens approximately every 90 minutes) 

Ali and I left the dogs in the van and headed over.  We were freezing our asses off.  My sweatshirt and jeans were no match for a windchill that had to be in the 20’s.  As we impatiently waited for the scheduled 5:16 eruption we talked with some people around us whom were all freezing their asses off as well.  Several times while we waited it snowed steadily.  I had to keep pinching myself, remembering it is June 17th.

5:16 came and went, nothing.  A few little gurgles came out but not the big plume. Finally around 5:22 it let loose.  Unfortunately the gray skies and frigid temps made the eruption blend in with the sky.  It was very hard to see much definition in the flow.  It was cool regardless to finally see something you have heard about your entire life. 

The geyser spouted  for probably close to a minute before going back into hibernation.  Ali and I wasted no time getting out of there.  We were both frozen solid and decided to jog back to the van to both lessen our time in the cold air and warm up our bodies a bit.

I went inside to get us a nutritious gift shop dinner of pizza, hot dog and salad before we headed back to our cabin.  We stopped again on the way back to let the dogs relieve themselves again in some bear shit covered grass.  It was so damn cold.  After 5 minutes we were craving the warmth of the van.

So we are chilling tonight.  I am writing this entry in notepad to later be copy and pasted over to my blog.  We have no internet, no cell phone service and no tv.  It’s back to basics.  We have a SHITLOAD of pics from today that I will upload once I am back on the matrix.  Yes I did an L sit in Yellowstone.

Tomorrow we will be seeing some more of Yellowstone in the AM before heading out to Idaho tomorrow.  Ali is supposed to run a 10K in Idaho on Saturday. She said if the weather is anything like it is here she ain’t doing it.

What a day.

Did I mention that I have managed to watch 7 or 8 Lost episodes while on the road?