Monday, June 21, 2010
The Halls Arrive
Today was our first day in which we had a little down time. Our best friends the Halls (Greg, Beth, Luke, & Lilly) were driving from Salt Lake City to Jackson Hole. The Halls had taken an over 30 hour Amtrak train ride from Toledo to SLC and were renting a van from there to drive up to meet us in Jackson. They weren't coming until the evening though, so we needed to reserve a campsite at Gros Ventre for us and them for the next four nights. The campsites at Gros Ventre were all first come, first reserved. Still we knew that they rarely filled up so we weren't in a huge rush to get there.
The Amtrak viewing car.
Mikah wanted to swim in the hotel pool so I took her down there for a bit. We came back, cleaned up, and went down for breakfast. Their breakfast was a table waited buffet which we got for free because at the time we booked online they had free continental breakfasts. Bonus! We were the last ones in the restaurant because it ended at 10:30 and we came in at about 10:28. I sat down to read the local Jackson paper as I ate.
The headline read: Grizzly Who Mauled Man, Shot Dead. Oh, great. The kids couldn't help but notice the giant bold headline, too. Dad, what does mauled mean? That was fun to explain before we were about to camp in bear country. As it turns out, a Yellowstone bear was tranquilized, tagged, and then soon after waking, killed a 70 year old local man hiking. The good part (I guess) was, that since the bear had just been tagged, it was easy to find it again, test for the man's DNA, and eventually kill.
After breakfast, we drove to Gros Ventre campground, reserved our sites and set up camp. The ladies at the reservation area gave us a long talk about keeping a clean camp to avoid bears and other unwanted scavengers. This didn't just mean leaving out food. It meant not leaving anything with a scent like toothpaste, deodorant, table cloths, cooking pans, coolers, stoves, even water bottles.
We wanted to avoid this.
And this.
We were all anxious to see the Halls and passed the time reading until they arrived in the afternoon. I had forgotten to mention that on the way in to the area we had seen loads of wildlife on the main road into Jackson. So, when the Halls arrived I suggested we have dinner and then go for a drive to see some wildlife.
Our campsite.
We drove down the road which the night before had more bison and elk than you could shake a stick at, and now there were only animals far in the distance. I was disappointed because I really wanted the Halls to see some of the same animals we had seen. As we would come to find on this trip; however, the animals would make appearances when we would least expect them.
The Hall's campsite.
That night as the Halls lay in their tent they heard wolves howling in the distance. Would this be our only encounter with wolves in the area?
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