First, a picture of me working as a Dining Room Host at Mammoth Hot Springs. My cohost (hostess) is good friend Megan from Manassas, VA. I really enjoyed working with her and getting to know her.
The Bighorn Sheep were herding on the cliffside between Mammoth and Gardiner.
We took a trip through the Northeast Gate to the park and spent a night in the town of Red Lodge, MT. The historic Pollard Hotel there has hosted the likes of Buffalo Bill, Calamity Jane, and William Jennings Bryan – and now us! It was a really nice experience.
Our good friend (and sous chef) Christina was married to Nick, our bartender, the day after we left the park. The week before we left she invited Lorraine to see her wedding dress, which made Lorraine feel quite honored. Both Christina and the dress are obviously beautiful. I wish we could have been there for the wedding.
Since I had bad laryngitis and couldn’t sing for the talent show, we set up a mini-concert to convince a few of our friends that I didn’t just freak out for the show.
To illustrate that the animals own the park, and we are just the visitors, I’ll show a picture of one of our Mammoth elk on the porch of the old court building which is next to our dorm, and a bison through the window of the Old Faithful Inn gift shop.
I figured out how to merge pictures to make panoramas. I’ll show you four of the examples. There are two views of the Mammoth Village, a picture of Mt. Everts, and a panorama of Gardiner from the mountain behind the town. It shows, from left to right, Mt. Everts, Bunsen Peak, Mt. Sepulchur, and snowcapped Electric Peak.
Lorraine again organized a group picture of residents of Aspen Dorm (and friends). As you can see, we had great participation.
We stopped at the Pine Creek Lodge in Paradise Valley a short while ago, and happened upon an outdoor concert by a good cowboy band. Most of the audience were locals, who wore there dress boots for the occasion.
On a recent trip to Bozeman, MT, we had lunch at The Garage, which at one time was a real gas station garage. The town of Bozeman seems to be surviving the economic problems just fine and you can see by the flower basket photo that they take great pride in dressing up and enjoying their thriving downtown.
As an example of what we do for fun while at Yellowstone, a large group of us “seniors” gathered recently at The Rail, a typical western cowboy bar/restaurant in Gardiner. I think it was a going-away party for a couple, but the reasons don’t really matter. We obviously had a good time. You see the group taken from the business side of the bar, me encountering a large bull elk that was just hanging around, and friends Lucy and Carl. Lucy was at Mammoth with us in 1963 when Lorraine and I met. It has been great reconnecting with her and getting to know Carl.
On our last trip to the Lamar Valley we were greeted by huge herds of bison and a black bear close to the side of the road. Lorraine got a good picture of him as we passed. We also saw a large bull elk between Roosevelt and Mammoth. I’m sure he will be an important player in “the Rut” (mating season), which we hate to miss.
Lin’s birthday was another good excuse to meet friends at the picnic table by the post office for wine and B-day cake. [By way of explanation, we can’t have alcohol in the public areas of the dorm, so we have taken to enjoying our wine at the picnic table outside, which is perfectly all right. We tended to do this at the slightest provocation. Lin’s B-day was one of our more important provocations.]
Lin & Ron
As our remaining time in the park shortened, we worked to fit in all the adventurous things we wanted to do. Two of those were a horseback ride and white water rafting down the Yellowstone River. As you can see, we did both. I’m on Tex, and Lorraine is on Bashful – which he wasn’t. Bashful wanted to keep his head in the butt of the preceding horse, so she had to keep holding him back. Since he didn’t like that, he turned and bit her on the leg. Nothing serious, just a surprise! In spite of that – and the fact that we could hardly walk afterwards – it was a fun ride.
The rafting on the rapids of the Yellowstone was also fun, and wet, and a little cold. The rapids are a lot bigger when you are in the river than they look from the adjacent highway.
We took the 6-mile loop from the road to Roosevelt over the Blacktail plateau. This was an important route for the Indians who traversed the park for years, but is now a dirt/gravel road that not many people use. The flowers were in bloom and it was truly beautiful.
On one of our last days in the park, Lorraine and I climbed the hills behind our dorm and found the old Mammoth graveyard dating back to the late 1800’s right after the park was established. We had happened upon this when we brought our sons to the park back in the 80s and the book Deaths in Yellowstone gives detailed accounts about who is buried there. Only one of the graves had a real headstone. The others were just outlines of stones. Some of them had wood markers that had almost disintegrated.
We having a great time in CA with grandson Jake, his mom and dad, Brooke and David, and will see son Evan and his new wife Linda this afternoon. I hope to add another entry or two to the blog before I finish it for the summer, so don’t quit checking it yet.
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