July 9th & 10th

We had some more visitors from home. Pat & Mary DeHeer and family were visiting from Carmel and we met for a drink Thursday night and dinner on Friday night. Jim took the younger ones on a hike up to the Old Faithful overlook. Ran into a couple coming down full speed that said they saw a bear farther up the path. But our group made a LOT of noise and continued on to the top. No sign of the bear but they did pass an elk browsing about 30 yards off the path on the way down.


Saturday we took a hike on Elephant Back trail. 3.5 miles round trip to an overlook over Yellowstone Lake with a rise in altitude of 800 feet. Doesn't sound like a lot but sure seems that way when your hiking it. It took us about 4 hours including a little time spent at the top. Ran into quite a few hikers on this trail and some from France & Austria were kind enough to take a pic of us.




On Sunday we hiked a short trail to Mystic Falls on the Little Firehole River out of the Biscuit Basin area. It was a beautiful hike but the most memorable thing on this trail will be the mosquitoes. They were in swarms the whole way. We had to put spray on three times and ran into some hikers that didn't have any and were literally covered with them. We stopped and shared our spray with them. The swarms are a byproduct of the really wet spring and the later than usual snow melt. We're told by August they will be a thing of the past. We even have them in the store in the evening. Bug spray is a big seller right now.


More updates next week
Ann & Jim