8/12 – Granby – Grand Lake, CO
8/13 – Grand Lake – Boulder, CO (Marge and Jack’s house)
Joyce (my favorite person) arrives from Baltimore – true to form the old man fails to pick her up at the airport and makes her take an Uber (he offers to pay) but this is going to cost him big time. He had a somewhat logical excuse but of course she wasn’t buying it.
8/14-15 – Boulder
We spent three days at Jack and Marge’s place in Boulder where I got to play with Gizmo and some other dog whose name I can’t remember (after all I will be turning 70 in dog years in December). We all had fun while the old man worked on editing this blog – as you can see it has taken him almost another three months to finally post it (can he be more of a slacker?).
8/16 – Boulder – Grand Lake, CO
8/17 – Grand Lake – Saratoga, WY
8/18-19 – Saratoga
8/20 – Saratoga – Shoshone, WY
8/21 – Shoshone – Porcupine Campground, ID (Eclipse Day)
8/22 – Porcupine Campground – Salt Lake City, UT
Joyce flew home from here – SAD, VERY SAD, I wish it were FAKE NEWS but not so.
8/23 Salt Lake City – Station Creek Campground, WY (Bridger-Teton National Forest)
8/24-25 – Station Creek Campground
8/26 – Station Creek – Jackson, WY
8/27 – Jackson – Gros Ventre Campground, Grand Teton National Park
8/28-29 – Gros Ventre Campground
8/30 – Gros Ventre – Grant Campground, Yellowstone National Park
8/31 – 9/1 – Grant Campground, Yellowstone NP – the following adventures all occurred in the park
Our next-door camping neighbors were a family of three from ….Washington State, Jonathan, Bridget and five-year-old Olivia. Of course Olivia wanted to meet me and tell me how cute I am (I hear this all the time but it never gets old) and the old man started chatting with Jonathan and Bridget. I have noticed something of a pattern with this behavior – when he becomes bored with himself (which occurs frequently because of his dull personality) he scopes out the campground neighbors and ties my leash near the ones that appear most interesting and likely to invite him over for a drink. If they have kids this tactic works 100% of the time and even with adults-only campers I am able to attract some positive attention most of the time.
He hit the jackpot with Jonathan’s family as they invited us over to their campfire to roast marshmallows and make smors. Red wine was also included in the campfire scene so everyone had a great time. As we said our good-bye the next morning they actually shared their address and phone number with him and invited us to visit their homestead where we could park our trailer anytime. (My person mentioned to me that during his bachelor days he would often get ladies to give him their phone numbers only to find that when he tried to call the numbers had been disconnected).
The Fun Bunch
The Thursday afternoon “Fun Bunch” at the Old Faithful Lodge bar: Rocky, the President and CEO of the group; the somewhat overly talkative road construction guy who is 47 and has had two mid-life crises so far (no one asked for details); Beth, who makes a living as a musician in Madison, WI (symphony orchestra, salsa band and piano lessons) so she can put two sons through college without student debt; a gentleman from Montana who didn’t say much but was laughing along with everyone; and the retiree from Illinois/Indiana who didn’t want to drive west so he and his wife are on a bus tour.
With the exception of Rocky and Beth, we were all meeting for the first time and yucking it up like a bunch of over-served millennials (this information was reported to me by the old man during our 17-mile driver back to our campground – he was right on 45 mph the entire journey which made me happy). He said he wanted to meet Beth’s son when we got back to Grant Village as it was his last night of work and there was a big party happening in celebration. Of course he did’t even come close to finding the party and was snoring up a storm by 9 – he wants me to add that he fed and walked me before he fell asleep/passed out (he’s not a full-blown slacker, just a partial).
9/2 – Grant Campground – Dubois, WY
9/3 – Dubois
The old man last visited this town in 1971 when he spent the summer in a real life bunkhouse with 30 other student geologists all participating in a summer field camp. They would spend the day tromping up and down the terrain hacking on rocks and pretending to be interested in the mineralogy and fossil content of the sedimentary and igneous strata of the Wind River region. The rocks ranged in age from very old to quite young (he wouldn’t tell me the technical terms for the rock ages as he believes my audience is composed of many dull-witted unscientific people and he doesn’t want them to have to spend extra time googling the scientific terminology).
9/4 – Dubois – Some small town in western Nebraska
Heading home