Yellowstone: Day 1
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock I’m sure you’ve heard that last Thursday was the 100th birthday of the National Park Service. It’s fitting that this weeks post takes us to one of my favorite national parks: Yellowstone. I’ve only been here once before but that's all it took for me to fall in love with this place. My best friend, Eric, and I had visited Yellowstone back in October when he and I did my first cross country road trip. As we stood there all bundled up in the cold waiting for Old Faithful to go off we had NO idea how much things were going to change over the next 6 months. We also didn’t know that October is the end of the season for most of the big national parks in the Midwest. None of the attractions or amenities had been open and there were hardly any people there in comparison to now. Eric also fell in love with Yellowstone on that trip, so much so that he decided to work here for the summer! Since cell service is pretty much unheard of in about 99% of the park Eric and I set a time and place to meet in case our phones didn't work and I'm so glad we did because the second I entered those gates I didn't send another text, tweet, or Facebook update for about 4 days...and I LOVED it! I just put that thing on airplane mode and didn't give it another thought!
We had agreed to meet Eric in front of the Ranger Station at the Old Faithful Village around 9am. Haley and I decided to get an even earlier start however because we’ve heard countless stories of the campgrounds filling up really early. I’m so glad we decided to heed those warnings because as we pulled up to the Madison Campground at about 8:10am there were cars and people everywhere. I jumped out of Penny and ran to get in line, nervously waiting to see if we were too late! When I got up to the window the ranger told me there was one group site left at the very back of the campground…we took it! We didn’t even bother to go look at it we just signed what needed to be signed and headed off to meet Eric. Thankfully he was right where he said he’d be because without phones we were at a loss trying to get in touch with anyone. Eric suggested that we go ahead and move our car to his dorm parking lot however Penny was packed pretty full so there wasn’t exactly a third seat available. I ended up letting Eric drive and I, not so gracefully, tried to climb in back. The only way we could get the door closed was if we put the window down and I stuck my legs out! Thankfully it was a very short ride to the employee area because I seriously felt like I was in the back of a clown car! We pulled up to his dorm and it looked like your typical college dorm mixed with your old cabin from summer camp. Eric informed us that his dorm was named Bitterroot, apparently they were all named after flowers (a lot like my cabins from summer camp which were named after trees haha). He pointed to the building to the left which was apparently the employee pub, he said he got us passes if we felt up to going out any of the nights we were here. It was crazy seeing this whole hidden side of Yellowstone, I mean it was huge and we hadn’t even scratched the surface! We grabbed our backpacks with all our hiking gear, aka sunblock, water, and a change of clothes, and headed up to see Eric's room and meet his friends. It was cool but also a little weird being back in a dorm setting. As we walked into Eric's room his roommate, Jamie, was still in bed. I forgot it was still only 9am because Haley and I had been up since about 6. As we were catching up and talking about what we wanted to do Eric’s suitemates came in, Michael and Angel. Granted it was early and Jamie had just woken up but when we met him he was nice and quiet, when we met Michael and Angel it was very different. If they weren't already I'm pretty sure the whole dorm was now awake! Angel is a very tall and very loud Puerto Rican with a huge but fun personality. He and Michael might be two of the most entertaining people I've ever met. It was great meeting everyone but Haley and I were ready to hike and explore all that Yellowstone has to offer! With the help of all the “locals” we decided to save the touristy hikes until tomorrow, Grand Prismatic and Old Faithful, and today they were going to take us on a hike on Xantera property. Turns out there's a part of Yellowstone that Xantera, the company that runs the hotels and restaurants in the park (and other parks such as Grand Canyon etc.), owns and everyday people don’t have access to. Since we were with employees though we were getting to hike around that land! Like I said earlier, it was just crazy seeing this whole other side to Yellowstone.
Haley, Angel, Eric, and I set off on our hike to an area known as Fern Cascades. However as we hiked we began to realize there were no ferns or cascades haha. It was still a really nice hike, there were a lot of fallen trees as well as a lot of burned trees. Apparently a fire had come through here at some point, I couldn’t tell if it was a controlled fire or not and it was obviously way before the boys had started working here. Eric had mentioned there would be a big pond when we got to the top so when we passed a small little pond on our left I was wondering if that's what he meant. Nobody stopped however though so obviously that wasn’t it. We kept going up and up, passed more and more fallen trees until finally we came to what clearly had to be the big pond. It definitely wasn’t a pond you could swim in but it was still really pretty to look at. I wish I had brought my hammock because there were a million places we could have hung it, oh well there were plenty of logs to sit on. Eric brought his guitar so we all just sat around admiring the scenery, drinking some beers, and listening to him play. I’d say it was a pretty perfect first afternoon in Yellowstone and I’m pretty jealous that Eric gets to do this all summer long! After awhile we were pretty hungry so we decided to head back down to civilization and get some food, plus we wanted to get back to the campsite while it was still light out so we weren’t setting our tents up in the dark!
We went to the “Lower Store” which looked like a cute old diner within a gift shop where we had a very interesting man serve us some burgers. The man made it very clear that his shift was ending in about 15 minutes and he wasn’t going to wait around for us to finish so we scarfed down our food and headed back to the dorm. Word got around that we had a group campsite at Madison so we ended up with a few more people than we planned to go camping with. It ended up being 7 of us in total; Eric, Haley, and me of course, his suitemates, Angel and Michael, and then two others, Andrew this really chill guy who honestly is exactly the type of guy I would expect to be working at Yellowstone, and then this girl Chelsea who might have the thickest southern accent I’ve ever heard…and I lived in Georgia for a couple summers.
Eric, Haley and I crammed into Penny the same way we did earlier, with my feet hanging out the window, and everyone else followed along in Chelsea’s car. As we pulled up to our campsite it appeared to be a great spot with quite a few trees that would be perfect for hanging our hammocks! First things first we unloaded and got to work setting up our tents. One good thing about camping while moving cross country is having just about everything I own in my car so we had plenty of blankets and pillows, my tent was as cozy as it gets! After we got everything set up and organized we set out to find firewood so we could get a fire going before it got dark. Eric’s always been great at making fires so we let him take charge and before long we had a roaring fire! He then played us some music on his guitar and we sat around the fire wishing we had thought to bring marshmallows! We had a fun night filled with music, laughter, and campfire smoke, and after the wonderful day we had hiking through Yellowstone I went to sleep with a smile on my face. Day one in Yellowstone was a success and I couldn’t wait to see what day two would bring!
