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On July 31st and August 1st, we went with Melissa, Kevin, and Josh into Yellowstone Park to try backpacking once more. This time, Richard convinced me to go, and we thought it would be fun to bring William and Marianne along this time as well. I was a little hesitant and unsure as to how this would all turn out, but I guess I was up for an adventure. Luckily, Melissa and Kevin are already pro's at this, so we counted on them to help us find a good site that involved a short hike. I am grateful for their tips and suggestions. Although a little more pricey, it was definitely nice to have some good freeze-dried food. I wasn't sure how it was going to turn out at first. In fact, I thought I would probably not like it, but it was actually really tasty. If money wasn't an issue, I would totally have these on hand to make for a quick meal at home. One serves two or three, and all you have to do is add boiling water, and you eat it right out of the pouch.
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On the second day of our backpacking trip as we were hiking back out, we ran into some people on the trail who said they had just spotted a bear. I am just glad I didn't know about a bear being close by the night before, because I may not have slept at all!
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This is a more detailed description of the waterfall hike from my journal. Rather than rewrite it, I thought it would be easier to just copy and paste it. I don't expect anyone to actually read it, however.
Well, I suppose this entry is proof that we did not get eaten by a bear on our backpacking trip. However, we did climb 300+ stairs to see a beautiful waterfall. Actually, we descended the stairs first, which was probably a good thing. If we would have had to climb the stairs to get to the waterfall, I probably would have turned around and decided that it wasn’t worth dying of exhaustion over. But, as it turned out, we would still be stuck in Yellowstone had we not climbed the stairs back to our van. On the way down I thought to myself, “Oh, it’s a little tiring, but I can totally handle these stairs. Three hundred and what??? Oh, that’s no big deal.” But, then I had to start climbing and I was like – “WHAT! I am going to DIE!!! Still 299 stairs to go??? AAAH!” Then Thomas decided to get ahead of all of us. He started running up like it was nothing, except he didn’t bother telling us. As we started to climb I was looking around for him and couldn’t find him anywhere. We concluded that he either fell to his death into the raging waters below, or he must have started back. Although, it was tempting to just jump into the raging water below when considering the alternative (the endless stairway), we opted to try the stairs first. So, Richard began to run (if you can call it that) up the stairs to try to catch up. We thought that maybe Thomas thought that he had been left, so we were worried he would get lost trying to find us once he got to the top of the stairs. Richard gasped as he reached the top only to find Thomas sitting on a rock waiting for all of us slow pokes. Richard told me later that when he saw Thomas patiently waiting on the rock (as if it took no effort to run up those stairs) he wanted to strangle him.:) This story is just more proof that Thomas was born with an endless amount of energy.
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