Another Great Weekend in Paradise

We had another great weekend. On Monday we hiked Mystic Falls again which is about a 2.7 mile loop trail. One of our hiking friends from last year was in town as he will be working the marina at Yellowstone Lake this year and he wanted to hike Mystic Falls. It had snowed on Sunday and closed most of the roads until Sunday afternoon but the weather was great for our hike. Yesterday we drove to the canyon area and hiked the south rim trail which has a little of everything. It is about 5 miles. We started out hiking across a big meadow which kind of felt like the sound of music. It continues on to clear lake crossing a thermal area with geyers and mud pots. After that it goes into the woods and then arriving at the rim of the canyon where you have a wonderful view of the canyon and the upper and lower falls. It then continues down to the river and finishes back at the picnic area where you started. A wonderful Hike. We hiked with our friend Stella who is the Assistant Manager at the Old Faithful Inn and Jim who works at Lake Yellowstone. After the hike, we drove to Rosevelt Lodge which is in the northeast part of the park where we participated in the Old West Cookout. Everyone who works the front desk at the hotels and lodges gets to go to the cookout for free so we can let our guests know how it is. You ride a covered wagon for about 30 minutes from Rosevelt to Pleasant valley where you have a meal of grilled steak, corn, potato salad, baked beans, corn bread, watermellon and peach cobler. They have a singing cowboy and it is quite fun. On the ride out there we saw bison and prong horn sheep. On the ride back to Old Faithful we came across a black bear that was grazing just down the hill from the road. There were about 15 cars stopped and was quite a traffic jam. We got some good pictures. After watching the bear for about 20 minutes, he decided to come up to the road and cross the street to go up the hill. The mass of people who had stopped split leaving a gap between them and the bear walked between the people and up the hill. Then when we thought our day could not get any better, we spotted a big black wolf just off the road between canyon and norris junction. It was too dark to get a good picture but it was really cool. We arrive back at Old Faithful at 10 PM. Today, Mary Ann and I both have to work from 2:30 to 10:30 PM. Thats all for now.