Yellowstone: What an adventure!

Dad stopped by for a visit on Saturday afternoon. (It was a lovely, sunny day in Colorado and we sat on the back porch watching the dog play in the backyard.) He had just returned from a camping trip in Utah and was catching me up on the details. At some point during our conversation, he recalled the summer that he, Priscilla and I vacationed out West for two weeks (summer of ’95 maybe?). Let’s just say that I was less than enthusiastic about a hiking and camping vacation. I greatly preferred our trips to the beaches of North Carolina and Florida, which featured amenities like running water, toilets, beds and privacy. This hiking and camping trip featured tents, streams and BEARS.

Yes, that’s right: BEARS. One painful day of this trip, we hiked up Slough Creek in Yellowstone. (You can see pictures of this hike at my picasaweb; we took the first portion of the hike again in October 2007 as a way to remember Priscilla.) We were warned of "high bear activity" at the ranger station on the way into the park, but Dad and Priscilla considered this normal and so we proceeded. I don’t recall the specifics of the first news of bears, but I think it might have been when we encountered another family that wanted to share our campsite because they had seen a bear at theirs. I know that at some point, we actually saw a bear up the ridge and it totally freaked me out. It was bad enough that I couldn’t use a blow dryer on the trip, but I was not about to spend several nights with BEARS. We abandoned the Slough Creek portion of the trip the next morning. I do have fond memories of the trip back down to the car: Dad fished while Priscilla and I lounged under some trees, alternating between napping and reading in the park's gentle breezes.

I was not the only person with a minimally enthusiastic experience on this particular trip. While Dad and I were chatting over the weekend, he shuddered when he remembered the night that we shared a tent sleeping in the wrong direction. Priscilla thought it would be preferable to sleep so that the tent was wider than it was long (not exactly how the tent was made to be used) – this way, three people could sleep without physically touching each other. She and I made out better in this deal than Dad did, however. I’m pretty short, so losing a few inches of length didn’t matter much to me. Dad’s a good seven or eight inches taller than me though, and the poor man slept all smushed up like a pretzel that night. He was in pain the next morning.

I only accompanied Dad and Priscilla on the first week of the trip. I headed back to Arlington, where Nell greeted me at the airport. Dad and Priscilla spent another week (maybe two) in and around Yellowstone. The trip must have greatly improved after my departure because it became an annual backcountry adventure for Dad and Priscilla. In a letter that Priscilla wrote to my father in 2004, she thoughtfully shared:

"...One of the most wonderful things you did for me was to take me to Yellowstone. The places we explored and the natural beauty and power of the place are one of the highlights of my life…
Even our home and the rewards of our garden in bloom did not connect me to America. That emotional sense of being in 'place,' of belonging to the earth, to a land, to country, really came to me in Yellowstone. The thing I owned least in all the world felt the most like mine. The wildness and utter impossibility of possessing it is what made me love it."