Wednesday, August 5
Today was an awesome day.
We had about 23 miles to make it to our first camp in Yellowstone. When we woke up at our usual time, it was raining. We waited out the rain until it stopped around 8am, 2 hours later than normal.
It started raining a little while we were packing and we didn't end up hiking until about 9:30.
It was a lot of road walking today on dirt roads. It turned out to be mostly sunny for the first 15 miles when we reached the Yellowstone national park border. We took a long break and the clouds moved in. It started to pour rain right as we left and it was another 2.5 miles to the Wyoming border.
We made it about a mile when the lightning and thunder started. It was all around us so we stopped to try to wait it out. It was raining the hardest it has ever rained on trail. The lightning was super loud but we calculated that it was about 6 miles away.
The lightning stopped about 20 minutes later but the rain didnt let up. We continued hiking. The trail turned into a river because of how hard it was raining.
We finally made it to the Wyoming border. If we weren't freezing and it wasn't raining, we probably would have celebrated more. But we took some pictures and moved on. We still had 6 miles to camp.
It rained until about 1.5 miles from camp. Which was perfect timing because we came up on our first thermal pools of Yellowstone. We saw the steam rising through the trees. So we went to go check them out.
Since we are in such a remote part of the park, we knew these pools were rarely seen. We were 12 miles from old faithful village, so nobody is day hiking up here and the area isn't a popular backpacking destination in the park.
The pools were awesome. It was a big area and you could feel the heat coming off them. The sulfur in the air burned your nose.
We were still cold so we finished the hike to camp and started a big fire. Andy and I have had to start a few wet fires in the last couple weeks. This one was the hardest, but we finally got it lit and we built it up.
How do you start a wet fire? Can you use any of these pools as a hot tub?
ReplyDeleteIt is tough, you have to search for any dry twigs that you can. Usually under trees, etc. Then you can throw wet logs on top and they eventually dry out and burn.
DeleteWe soaked in a spot where the pools pour into a stream later in Yellowstone. It was nice. Most of the pools themselves are scalding hot water though. So you can't soak directly in them if you want to keep your skin.
It is tough, you have to search for any dry twigs that you can. Usually under trees, etc. Then you can throw wet logs on top and they eventually dry out and burn.
DeleteWe soaked in a spot where the pools pour into a stream later in Yellowstone. It was nice. Most of the pools themselves are scalding hot water though. So you can't soak directly in them if you want to keep your skin.