Apparently it isn't a thru-hike for us until one of us needs to see a doctor. We have pulled off trail in West Yellowstone for (hopefully) a day for Sara to get some stomach pain checked out. The doctor here is incredibly understanding of our hiking schedule and was able to get her multiple prescriptions in case the first doesn't work. I have also started feeling a bit nauseous, like my first symptoms last year, so I'll get in as well, but hopefully back on trail shortly!
The morning hiking into Old Faithful was incredible. We hiked into, and through, the Shoshone Geyser Basin. Like the Old Faithful area this was a thermal area with boiling water and sulfur mist spouting up in random places and collecting in crystal clear pools with blue and copper colored walls. While not as explosive as the Old Faithful basin, we got to walk right through this area. We were close enough that we felt nervous about the sturdiness of the trail in some spots, especially when our poles made a hollow sound upon striking the ground.
We reached Old Faithful in time for lunch and grabbed our box from the PO. The backcountry office let us take over their porch to go through all our food, then leave our packs while we played tourist for a bit. There were so many people! We watched Old Faithful do it's thing then found some food before continuing on to our last spot in the park.
On the way to our camp at Summit Lake we saw multiple trees stripped of bark by grizzlies looking for ants and grubs. Sara took it as a good sign that maybe the bears were so full of food that they wouldn't eat us. I saw it as the bears were so desperate for food they had to tear apart trees, which meant we would be attractive. Fortunately we finished the loooong day to camp with no incident.
The next day we headed out of the park and through a lot of what burned in 1988. Sara was feeling pretty rough by this point, but we still managed to hit our mileage on our way to West Yellowstone. The trail drastically changed as far as moisture is concerned. As soon as we left Summit Lake the ground dried out. We ended up on some snowmobile routes the rest of the way into town, which were also very dry. I had miscalculated our water carrying to the point we started getting a little worried, but fortunately found some just before I would have had to run a few miles off trail to a spring. Aside from that we had a fairly mellow cruise into West Yellowstone.
We are now camped at the Grizzly RV park looking on with envy at the zip line adventure course. We did find ice cream though so for now we are stationary and happy. Sorry for the lack of pictures on this post, but we don't have a way to get pics up currently.
More from Lima,
Forrest and Sara
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