Day Five

It was a weird morning! After off and on thunder storms all night neither of us felt like we were well rested even though we'd been in the tent for almost 11 hours. We bought our bear spray the day before and, I think, went to sleep with lingering thoughts of grizzlies in the back of our minds. But we shook off the weird nights sleep and got breakfast going. The sun was steaming off all the rain from the night before and we had hot coffee and granola. (Powdered milk rules.) Then we went to the Delacy trail head a few miles north inside Yellowstone still and went on a easy but beautiful 6 mile hike to Shoshone lake. We had beautiful weather and were finally away from cars and roads. It felt great to stretch our legs and be amidst the landscape instead of viewing it from the car. While the car is an amazing way to see the country it felt good to venture out a little more.

We stopped at a park junction to pick up more cheese and bread for lunch and also another local beer.  In case you hadn't noticed we've made it a habit of trying all the local beers we can along the way. Today, to accompany our pepperjack, lettuce, and mustard we had a brown ale called Moose Drool. We also bought a flask of whiskey appropriately called Yellowstone bourbon. Don't worry we didn't open that one until dinner time.

From there we drove south through the remainder of the park and found our way to Flagg ranch about 5 miles north of Grand Teton National Park and were pointed in the direction of free, first come first serve campsites. Right up our alley. They didn't dissapoint. We found a vacant tent site right along the Snake River with an awesome glimpse of the Tetons off to the side. It felt more isolated than our previous sites, we loved it. We had a few neighbors, one of whom invited us to hang out around his campfire that evening: an older man named Gary. First, we made dinner. We set up our collapsible picnic table along the water. We had an amazingly delicious instant vegan chili mixed with onions and tomatoes and lot's of spices. To go with it we had tortilla chips and whiskey. Yum. In order to finish the large amounts of food we'd made we decided to play food trivia where we ask questions about ourselves and if the other doesn't know they have to take another bite, but if they do know- the question asker needs to eat. The chili was gone in no time.

Then we went over to join Gary by his fire. There were two other couples there- probably in there mid 50's. We were right at home. Mess shared a Grain belt (classic MN beer) with Gary and we sat down to warm up around the fire. We introduced ourselves and learned all about how long they'd all been on the road and we also shared our adventures with them. From there Gary shared some backpacking and hunting stories from all of his years living in Wyoming. He had the most unbelievable stories about being tracked by wolves that thought he was an elk while backcountry hiking,  or being on a mission to find a fallen airplane and being delivered a bottle of whiskey and a playboy magazine from a helicopter.  Gary told these stories with a casual grace that left us feeling comfortable with him but also in awe of his knowledge and love of the Wyoming wilderness. The stars had come out by now and boy were they spectacular.  After admiring them for a short while we said goodnight to our new friends and went back to the tent. Full of chili and great stories we went to bed.