Thursday, August 6, 2009

Canyon Sunsets

Last night a big thunderstorm camped out over Madison campground. It made it kinda hard to sleep. Jeff snapped this photo of the lightning out the window of the tent. We didn’t get up to much today since we were mostly busy moving locations and prepping for the backpacking trip.
Jeff treated me to a lunch at the Old Faithful Inn dining room. It has these beautiful etched glass windows depicting park wildlife in human roles; putting on a play, whooping it up at the bar, dancing. I like to imagine the early park visitors, dressed up for dinner – black tie and ridiculously fancy dresses – all in the middle of the wilderness. We got our backcountry camping permit today from a no-nonsense Park Service Volunteer. He didn’t crack a smile as he quizzed us over the backcountry regulations. He asked us what we should do if a bison charged us. We were stumped. “Use the bear spray?” I guessed. “That might help, and RUN.” That might have come in useful yesterday.
 We met up with my parents at Canyon and went through their equipment weeding out the nonessentials. “Yes to extra wool socks, no on the 5 lbs. of extra granola, no to shampoo, a novel and an extra blanket…” I managed to pry about 5 spare flashlights from my father’s grip. I could imagine the headline; “Man dies after attempting to carry 20 lbs of flashlights into the wilderness.”
We watched the sunset over the canyon and revisited our wedding site.
An osprey nest on a pinnacle over the river.
This picture shows where the nest is.
Here is a little moss flower we found.

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