Thursday August 27,
2015 day 30 Yellowstone National Park, Mammoth
Campground, site 46
53 towing miles
Woke up this morning to this terrific sunrise.
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| Sunrise at Baker's Hole |
Left Baker’s Hole at 07:30 and headed for Yellowstone
National Park through the west entrance.
The west entrance road takes you 14 miles to Madison Junction, where we
stopped at Madison Campground to dump our tanks. Madison Junction is so named because the
Firehole and the Gibbon River join together to form the Madison River.
Left there and drove on to Mammoth to the
campground. The road between Norris
Junction and Mammoth had a lot of construction, was all tore up, and was one
lane. It was like this last year.
Arrived at the campground at 10:00. We were able to get our favorite site,
#46. We stayed in #48 last year, and #46
in 2013.
We immediately made some nice
big sandwiches because we were hungry having not eaten anything yet. Tried catching up on blogging with little
success.
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| Mammoth Campground, site 46 as seen from campground road. |
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| Overview of meadow and cliffs across from our site. |
When waiting in line to sign up for a campsite, the guy in
the trailer ahead of us was asking Marsha about ours. He had bought his this year and was unhappy
with the fit and finish and was considering a Casita, but had not looked at one
yet. He liked ours and wanted to see it. He had a 20’ box trailer and wanted something
with a little more quality.
After he set up and saw that we were set up, he came over
for a showing and liked what he saw. As
we were talking, a storm suddenly came up with big rain drops, thunder, and
then small hale.  |
| Hale in the fire pit. |
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| Hale on the picnic table. |
It lasted about ½ hour
and we were all standing under the awning.
The awning held up well because there was no wind. While we were standing around he talked about
all his adventures over the years with backpacking, camping, hiking, all over
the US national parks. His name was
Nelson and he’s camping here by himself.
Went into the town of Gardiner at the north entrance. The roads in town are all torn up getting new
sidewalks, curbs, and pavement. We
needed some groceries.
When we got back, we tried to take our campground walk, but
got interrupted by more rain. So I tried
working on the blog by uploading some pictures, but it was too slow. Gave up.
But while I sat out, a bull elk came walking across the
hill, next to the campsite. He was
slowly working his way across the hill, eating vegetation. He was a young bull, with spike antlers about
12” long with no branches. Later found
out that it was a yearling.
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| Just a teenager. |
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| Some day it will be his turn. |
Then tried another campground walk, phase II. Made it all the way around to the check-in
station where we saw a lonely looking kid (college age) standing there with a
bike asking for the camp host. Asked him
what he needed and he said he was stranded there and needed to get to
Gardiner. He had a bike and I asked him
why he didn’t ride his bike. He said his
bike had no brakes and I looked at it and he was right. Why would they make a bike with no brakes, I
asked. He said it’s a special bike for
indoor track racing. There is no way you could ride a bike the five miles o Gardiner with no brakes.We told him we
could give him a ride to Gardiner. He
was so grateful. Asked him how he got
stranded with a brakeless bike at Mammoth Campground with the sun setting and
it getting dark. He had a fight with his
girlfriend of 2.5 years and she dropped him off and threw his bike out of the
van and took off. He was in sad shape
and I felt very sorry for him. He had a
motel reservation in Gardiner and that’s where he wanted to go. He had no idea what he would do next or how
he would get home to Minneapolis. I
asked him if he needed money and he said he was OK. What a story, and I’ll never know how it
ends. His name was Stone. He was so grateful for our kindness (he kept
saying).
It was 21:00 and dark when we got back to the campsite.
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