Leaving Yellowstone 

August 4th

The morning hike out of the park was uneventful. The trail is mostly open country running above the river.  Later, there were some broad, beautiful meadows where I would’ve expected to see a moose. 

One thing which struck me was how few beaver dams there have been.  I’m not sure if that’s a legacy issue from the fur trader days, but it seems like beavers would thrive in these valleys. 

There are two different patrol cabins at the southern edge of the park. Neither was staffed.

My pack had another failure where the support rod punched through. I tried my fieldbrepair, but in the process of pulling the rod into place, it broke. I tried to splint the rod, but no luck.  Now, I had a backpack that did not distribute weight evenly.  I was angry at first, but I reminded myself that I wanted an adventure and this would just make things all the more interesting. 

I climbed up out the Yellowstone area.  I could feel the altitude.  Eventually, I reached an unnamed peak at over 10,000. A very faint cell signal appeared so I stopped to see if I could check in with society. About 15 minutes later, Qtip shows up.  He said Lucky  was with him.

They were going to camp on the peak.  It was tremendous.  You could see the Winds, the Tetons, and other mountain ranges.  However, I still had another hour to go so I left to hike down the mountain. 

I ended up at a famous creek. It’s called Two Ocean Creek because it splits and one fork empties into the Atlantic  (via the Gulf of Mexico) and the other empties into the Pacific.

I camped nearby.  A doe developed a crush on me and kept coming to my campsite.  It actually got annoying after I got in the tent and she would crunch her way cloder.  Finally, I scared her off for good.