Day six. I’ll try to keep this short, considering the previous couple walls of text that I produced last. We’re back at the same camp in Montana now, and I’m pretty happy about that. Although it’s still daylight, everyone else is already in bed. Today was kind of a chill day. We weren’t rushed to get anywhere, so we got to have a big breakfast and just take a breather. I played a few rounds of mini-golf with my little sister at the little course in the RV park, and discovered that any number of do-overs are allowed. I saw a Lee alumnus in a Subway! It was pretty crazy to see someone else from Cleveland here. What are the odds?
Elk are all but tame here. There are elk in people’s yards, on their porches (because that makes it easier to eat the tops off the hedges), outside of the visitor’s center and crossing the roads. By the way, this is in a small outlying town, not even the park itself.
My little sister wants nothing more than to visit the gift shops, and I can’t really blame her, considering all the neat stuff around here. We’re going to go visit the big one near Old Faithful tomorrow just for her, where she hopes to find a ceramic llama. I don’t exactly know why, but I’ve wanted stranger things before, so I think that’s awesome. Of course, I doubt they’ll have them, so I think I’ll order one one Ebay and have it waiting for her when we get home. Shh! It’s a surprise.
The highlight of the day was hiking a five mile loop at Mammoth Springs. Setting out, it was sleeting and snowing, and there were pretty strong gusts of wind, too. Not ideal hiking weather, but almost all of the other trails are closed, and we didn’t exactly come to Yellowstone to watch the grass grow through the RV windows. So me, Mom, Dad and Kaylee bundled up and went for it, and once we got into the forest a bit the weather improved. Mom bought bear repellant for the hike, just in case. Halfway in, Kaylee hurt her ankle, which resulted in me carrying her a couple of times. That that ankle didn’t seem to slow her down too much, though, because she ran straight for the mini-golf course as soon as we got back. I love that little girl =)
