Mac n' Fredo n' Cheese

5/28/24 - 5/29/24

Opal-

Our first real weekend in the park was spent backpacking. We didn’t quite have our work schedules aligned so one night was all we could manage. I went to the backcountry office on Monday morning and picked up a permit as well as some food. Tuesday morning, we packed lunch and drove to the Fairy Falls trailhead. We hiked about three miles to the falls which fell from a height of “pretty frickin tall” as Oliver puts it. After stopping there for a moment, we walked to our campsite which was in the middle of a valley that also happened to be a marsh. The area around our campsite was all boggy. I took my boots off and splashed around in the creek nearby. You could hear the frogs croaking all night. For dinner, I had planned what we have named Mac n’ Fredo n’ Cheese. Oliver has made a beatbox to its name, ask him about it after summer is over. Anyways, the recipe.

1 box of mac n cheese

1 premade tub of chicken alfredo

1/2 onion

13 cherry tomatoes

Garlic powder

Coconut oil

Prepare the mac n cheese and add the package of chicken alfredo overheat. Set aside. Chop the onions and tomatoes and sauté with coconut oil and garlic powder until onions are golden. Add tomato mixture to the mac n fredo mixture and warm up. Enjoy.

Oliver was skeptical of this idea, to say the least, but thoroughly enjoyed the meal. Later we made a fire and sketched some drawings until what looked like a thunderstorm sent us into the tent. It never actually rained and we got a good eight hours of sleep.

Oliver-

I know it's generally recommended to stick to trails in Yellowstone, and I have heard horror stories about people falling through the crust, but my general rule is where you can find Bison tracks you can go safely. We put this rule into practice this trip. We had got to the campsite early, turns out Opal and I walked pretty fast and had most of the afternoon to kill. We had noticed signs for Imperial Geyser earlier in the hike and could see steam rising from behind a hill which we assumed was it. I suggested instead of hiking all the way back the trail like we had just done we just point ourselves in the direction of the steam and bushwack it. This turned out to work well and the Geyser was well worth the trip. On the way back I dragged Opal up a hill overlooking the valley where we were camping, and we found a few ponds and a single lazy Bison. To get back I used a picture of the landscape that I had taken earlier to figure out which hill we were on. Right before we got back though we had to cross the marsh that surrounded our campsite, and I did a significantly worse job at keeping my shoes dry than Opal did. She generously let me use her extra pair of socks which turned out to be socks that I had given her at Christmas (among other things, I am not that bad of a gift giver). The lesson here; if you are going to get your girlfriend socks, make them Smartwool.

Gettin into it

5/21/24 - 5/26/24

Oliver-

Opal is working the dinner shift tonight which goes until 10:30 and I got off at 6:00 so I decided to give my first stab at fishing. The section I chose to target was the Little Firehole River which leads into the main Firehole about three miles north of Old Faithful. The river winds through a meadow with a few sections going through groves of pines. On both sides of the meadow are hills that make it feel like you are in a little valley. When I got out of the car and peeked over the hill, I could see a handful of Bison peacefully grazing on both banks of the river. I worked my way a quarter mile up the river with no luck until a couple Bison blocked me from going any further. On my way back down though I caught three Brook trout which felt good for an on a whim trip after work. At times when I was fishing the Bison on the opposite bank of the river were so close you could hear them breathing. I released all the fish but did take home a little Bison fur that I found stuck to a pinecone with the idea to use it when tying flies.

Opal-

Some things Oliver forgot to mention. First, a few nights ago we got about three inches of snow. It melted by the end of the day but that morning if you had told me, it was the middle of February, I would have believed you. Second, we had our first bear sighting the other night on a drive around the Old Faithful area. It was a grizzly and pretty far away. There were a lot of stopped cars and at first, I thought it was because of bison nearby. Then Oliver noticed people looking off in another direction and there was the bear.

Today was my first day off work. I drove to West Yellowstone and got us a backpacking permit for tomorrow night. More on that to come. It was a beautiful drive following the Madison River with the peaks of mountains just visible on the horizon. After getting the permit I headed to a market to pick up some food, and then started my drive back. After about ten minutes of driving traffic came to a standstill. Two hours later I discovered the source of the clog, a single bison by the road everyone was stopping to take pictures of. The rest of the drive was easy, but it gave me a little peek into what summer will be like with all its visitors. For the rest of the day, I took my lunch, a book, and some art supplies down behind the cabins to the Firehole River and sat in the sun taking it all in. I am a hostess at the Inn, the oldest building here, and it's quite gorgeous. My coworkers are fun, and the guests aren’t too annoying yet. My only complaint is that I am not working very much right now, I have been reassured though that after this week I won’t need to worry about that at all. For now, we seem to be settling in well.

Natural Bridge

5/22/24

Opal-

Today after our first training we took our afternoon and hiked to a natural bridge. We saw a marmot and some mountains.

Snowy

5/21/24

Opal-

One thing I was not expecting when we arrived here was for it to be winter. I was fully prepared for summer, to be getting tan, and taking in the sun, but no it's snowy here.

The Drive

5/19/24 - 5/21/24

Oliver-

As far as long drives go, the drive up was not bad. The first day was only seven hours so we had plenty of time to stop in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. We briefly stopped at the falls and then got dinner at a Thai place where we were the only customers for most of the meal. Although this was initially concerning the food was good and we left satisfied. We camped at Blue Mounds State Park right over the Minnesota border which let us check another state off the growing list we have been to together. The campsite was nice and, in the evening, we took a long walk through the plains to try and spot some bison. The next day’s drive was much further, more like twelve hours. Most of it was spent crossing South Dakota and Montana which if you have crossed that part of the country, you will know why I have nothing interesting to report. That was until we reached western Montana where we drove into beautiful mountain ranges that started to remind us why we chose this area. We stopped for dinner at a Siberian restaurant, called Taste of Siberia, which turned out to be a food stand outside a large gas station. The food was excellent and more than enough to fill us up, if you are ever in the area, I would strongly recommend it. We woke the next morning to light snow but had to move quickly to get checked into our jobs. After filling out paperwork and getting our uniforms we drove south through the park to Old Faithful. No more than twenty minutes after getting to our employee cabin a bison walked down our road right past the window. We are still getting settled in but it's safe to say we are more excited than anything.