Denial.

I have a thing with bears. Really, I have a thing with thinking. I think about things... all sorts of things... constantly. I think about possibilities and eventualities, and when I'm in bear country my mind just naturally wanders to all the possibilities and eventualities that might happen if I were to run smack into a bear and it started to eat me.

So if I'm in bear country for say... three nights, two in campgrounds, one in the backcountry, including 40 miles worth of hiking, where there is nothing for my mind to focus on outside of what's all around me... including bears... I find that after awhile of not paying attention, my stomach is tense, I've not been eating or drinking as much as I should (because you never eat or drink as much as your should when your stomach is tense from nervousness) and then I start feeling sort of out of it, because I haven't been eating or drinking as much as I should...

it's bad. And it's all inadvertent... it's not like I'm walking around totally sure that a bear is going to pop out of the undergrowth and eat me at that very second, I just hike along, thinking about all the plants around me, and all the animals around me, and what a pretty day it is, and the next thing I know my mind is running through where on the surrounding hillsides a helicopter could land for the ensuing rescue operations... just running through possibilities...

anyway - we drove down Tuesday after we got new tires for Josey. Camped in a campground north of West Yellowstone that night. Got breakfast at Old Faithful Inn, then drove around the park trying to find a campground and tring to get a backcountry camping permit for Thursday night, till we said the heck with traffic, hiked up Mount Washburn, and camped at this totally awesome campside just north of Gardiner. Thursday we hiked 17 miles along Hellroaring Creek and then The Yellowstone River. Camped right next to some small rapids in the river. Friday, woke up, hiked out the Black Canyon of the Yellowstone to Gardiner, ate breakfast, hiked back into the park and to our car by 2pm (14 miles). Drove home. Stopped by the Grant-Kohrs Ranch National Historic Site on our way down, and Anaconda on our way home. Both were really pretty and of general historic interest. D doesn't usually let us make stops, so it was fun to not drive straight through, even if it is a relatively short drive by out standards at 5 hours each way.

Now - photos.

We saw lots of Bison on Wednesday, driving around the park. Also saw a fat and happy coyote, a fox, elk, deer, an invisible bear (which was very exciting, especially the traffic jam it caused) and lots of smaller wildlife during our trip.

Storms rolled in each night, as well as Thursday morning, and Friday around noon. It meant there were always crazy big clouds moving around the sky, concentrating then dissapating... good times.
Yay! Clouds!
Streaks of sunlight between clouds!
Marmot on the Mount Washburn trail...

Nibble, nibble...
yummy - grass!
Views from Mount Washburn trail are nice.
Storm clouds always add to the ambiance.
Someone had built a snowman.
It was gown when we came back down so we build our own.
At the beginning of our two-day backpack. Yellowstone River below.
I like going down hill. I also like the wide open views. No accidently running into a bear here!
D coming down the hillside behind me.
Bridge over the Yellowstone. Taking us from the road on the south side to the trail that follows the north side.
Wild mountain lilies... there were all over the place, but D's picture didn't turn out well.
Montana's state flower - The Bitterroot.
I'd never seen them in the wild before... there were a good number of them.
It's fun to wonder how many decades ago someone slid an antler into the slot where the two tree branches divided... now the tree is all grown up and has surrounded the antler.
The wild rose garden next to our backcountry campsite.
There is a black bear in the photo below. (The photo has already been zoomed and cropped for ease of spotting :)
There is a blond colored black bear in the photo below.
The end.

P.S. This trip, instead of letting my mind wander around to bear attacks, I just spent the entire time, hiking, eating, trying to go to sleep, re-telling myself stories, from novels, from movies, from whatever, I trained my mind to wander onto things intentionally, and it sort of worked... still didn't get much sleep the night we camped out... but ya know... denial works sometimes.