People are Strange...

Perhaps a lunatic was simply a minority of one.

--George Orwell

Tonight I am in Sheridan, Wyoming.  It’s just a stopover on my way to Mount Rushmore tomorrow.  But for the past few days I’ve been at Yellowstone National Park (no cell phone service, no internet, and no Starbucks in this park either...).  It really is a bizarre place:  steam that shoots out of the ground, bubbling mud pits, pools of boiling water in all sorts of vivid colors, frozen lakes and rivers with water boiling at the edges, solid ground that burbles and pops, other-worldly landscapes that look like they were made of marshmallows.  I could go on and tell you about all of the interesting and strange geothermal things that I saw—but I won’t.  Everyone knows that those things are in Yellowstone and there are lots of pictures of them online.  Instead, I’m going to tell you about two interesting people that I met and one interesting wildlife encounter.

One of the things I’m learning on this trip is that if you talk to the people who look like the kind of people that you shouldn’t talk to, you’ll get the most memorable experience.  On Sunday night, some buffalo and elk came to graze near a stream just outside of the campground I was staying at in the park.  I was taking pictures of them, and I noticed a funny old guy who was also standing and watching the animals.  He was a little stooped over so that his balding head, which had wiry gray hair that shot straight out as if he were charged with static electricity, protruded forward and he looked just a little tipsy.  It was the stance common of old men who have bad backs and weak knees. 

The buffalo didn't seem to notice this painting

That wasn’t the odd part, though.  If that were all, he’d be nothing more than some old guy out looking at the buffalo and elk.  What made him interesting was that he was carrying an oil painting that was about 2’ x 2.5’ big, and he kept pointing it at the buffalo as they moved.   After I snapped a few shots of the grazing creatures, he said to me, “I’ll bet that is going to be a good picture.”

“Yah,” I replied, “The setting sun has some nice light on them right now.”  Since he seemed talkative, I just had to bait him for more conversation. “Did you paint that picture?”

“No, this was done by a 15 year old Native American boy.  Isn’t it incredible?”  He turned the picture away from the buffalo and directed it towards me so I could see it.  The painting was of a buffalo skull that had a feather tied to each horn.  Around the skull was a white circle with narrow black, blue, yellow, red, and orange bands painted at every ninety degrees around the circle.  There were four feathers hanging from the circle, and at each of the top corners were yellow X’s surrounded by circles. The entire thing was painted on a black background. 

“Yes, it’s very interesting!” I told him. 

“I brought it out here to see how the buffalo react to it,” he told me. 

“Have they noticed it yet?” I asked him.  As far as I could tell, the buffalo had more interest in eating grass than they did at being art critics.

“Oh, I think so!” he exclaimed.  “This painting captures the spirit of the buffalo and I think they feel that.”

I watched the buffalo a little longer to see if I had missed something.  I still didn’t notice anything.   We talked for about an hour.  I found out that his name was Paul and that he has been living in an RV for about 3 years.  He previously worked as a stock trader, and traded stocks of oil and gas companies, but he said he didn’t really enjoy it much.  Now he spends a lot of his time traveling the country and talking to people in different Native American tribes.  When I told him I was from the San Luis Obispo area, his eyes lit up. 

Just one of the guys I met later

“I know where that is!” he said.  He told me that he actually had been to Morro Bay, and that he loved Morro Rock. He also had gotten his RV stuck in the sand at Pismo Beach as well.  He also told me about an episode of Nova that he recently saw that described the geothermal activity at Yellowstone.  Before we parted, I asked him if I could take a picture of his picture. He thought it would be a good idea, and that there was such a nice natural setting for it. I snapped a picture, thanked him for the conversation, and we each went on our way.   He was actually quite an intelligent and interesting guy to talk to, even if he seemed a bit strange at first.

The second character that I talked with was on the other end of the spectrum from Paul.  His name was Chris, and I met him while sitting outside the Old Faithful gift shop waiting for the rain to stop.  On Monday morning, I rode my bike to see Old Faithful. I thought it would be a nice way to see the park and also to get some exercise.  “It’s only 17 miles from the Madison campground to Old Faithful,” I told myself. “That’s not bad at all.”   I hadn’t really thought, though, that about 90% of the entire trip was above 7100 feet, so it did turn out to be quite a good aerobic workout.  That part aside, after I got to Old Faithful it had started to rain a little bit, so I found a bench underneath an overhang outside of the gift shop, and I sat down to let the rain pass.  I had my backpack with me because I remembered the temperature conflicts I had when I rode the Going To The Sun Road in Glacier.  When I left for the ride to Old Faithful, it was about 45 degrees out, but it looked clear and sunny so I thought it might get warmer (wrong!). I purposely put shorts on under my long pants, wore multiple layers on top, and brought a pair of walking shoes.  I was going to be ready if I needed to add or remove layers, and they were all in my backpack.  Also, I’m sure I looked a little ragged as I hadn’t had a shower in two days and I had just ridden 17 miles with almost no oxygen.

Old Faithful was cool...too bad it couldn't talk

Plus, I was wet from the unexpected rain.  As I was waiting out the rain, two kids who looked far worse than I did walked up.  One of them, a girl, walked into the store while the other, a boy, sat down next to me.  He was wearing clothes that looked like he hadn’t changed in weeks: his pants were black and grubby and had a couple of patches on the knees, he had a well-worn black jacket that was covered with dirt and frayed at the cuffs and collar, on his head was a brown beanie that also was covered in dust, and his hands were filthy.  After a few moments, he noticed me sitting by my bike and he asked me if I was riding through the park.  I told him that I was staying in a campground and had just ridden from there.

“That’s cool,” he replied, nodding his head approvingly.

“Are you packing it through the park?” I asked him.

“Yah, we just hitch-hiked here yesterday and camped under a tree.  Dude, it was wicked, we heard coyotes at one point and also almost got stepped on by buffalo.”

“Wow.  That sounds like an exciting night camping!” I told him.

“It was.  I, like, had my knife out ready for if I needed it.”

He told me that he had been “on foot” for the past 10 years.  He first started hitchhiking when he was 15.  He was in Arizona and he wanted to go to Seattle because he thought it would be cool, so he just started walking that direction.  He asked where I was from, and I told him San Luis Obispo (because no one knows where Arroyo Grande is). 

“Whoa! I’ve been there!” he responded.  “I got arrested there!”  Somehow I wasn’t surprised.  He said that he peed on a cop car but didn’t notice that there was a cop inside the car at the time he was doing the peeing.  “I guess I was too wasted or something.  One of my friends was like way past it, and couldn’t move so I was trying to get him someplace where no one would mess with him.  After I did, I just had to piss real bad and I saw a cop car and thought, ‘Cool. That’s where I’ll piss.’”  He also told me that prior to his friend getting “way past it,” he also licked “that wall full of gum” to see if it would taste like gum. 

I found out his name was Chris, and that he and his girlfriend were on their way to Canada to check it out.  He showed me where he burned his finger from sticking it in a geyser, too.  “It totally hurt, but it was cool!” he said, proudly as he held his dirty finger up. I could see that it was indeed a bit red through all the dirt.    

At that point, his girlfriend had come out of the store and had a bowl of instant oatmeal she had purchased (at least, I think she purchased it), and they were going to share it.  I had some crackers and chocolate in my backpack that I was going to eat during my trip, but I figured they could use it more than I could.  They gladly accepted it when I offered it to them, and the girl commented that she couldn’t remember when the last time she had chocolate was.  The rain stopped, so we said goodbye, and I rode back to my campsite.

The animal encounter of my trip also occurred on my bike ride to Old Faithful.  I had gotten about 5 miles into my ride when I came across a herd of buffalo on the side of the road.  There were maybe 30 of them, so I went to the opposite side of the road and tried to carefully pass them.  However, as I started going past, they all started running in the same direction that I was going, keeping pace with me.  I didn’t want to be part of a stampede, so I stopped and backed as far away from the road as I could to give them some room.  The road was cut into the side of a steep hill, so I couldn’t really back up too far.  When I stopped moving, though, they all stopped moving as well.  There were two or three calves in the herd, as well as some rather big bulls with horns that did not look pleasant so I was trying to be as cautious as possible. 

I almost became the guy on this sign

I watched them, and they watched me.  I slowly tried moving forward on the road again, and as if they were playing “Follow the Leader” with me, they also all started to move.  I wasn’t quite sure if it was funny or scary.  I stopped moving again, and they also stopped moving again.  So there we all were—about thirty buffalo and I—standing on opposite sides of a two-lane road, checking each other out.  I was remembering the signs and flyers that showed comical pictures of a guy being gored by a buffalo with warnings about how dangerous they were. I didn’t want my picture on the next one of those signs, so I was hoping they would start moving and stop looking at me so suspiciously.  After what seemed like an hour (but in reality was only about 3 or 4 minutes), an RV came down the road.  As it approached, the buffalo started to slowly move.  The RV went slowly past them, and I rode alongside the RV keeping it between the buffalo and me until finally I was past them and then continued on to Old Faithful.  After Old Faithful had done it’s thing and I was in the rain unlocking my bike from a pole where I had secured it, an older couple approached me.  They were smiling, giddily, and in a thick German accent the man said to me “This is quite a dangerous bike ride!”

“Not really, the rain will pass pretty soon. It’s only a small cloud,” I said, pointing overhead to the gray cloud that was surrounded by mostly blue sky.

“No, not the rain! We are from the RV! We recognized you from the road!” the older lady replied, excitedly and with the same German-sounding accent as the man.

“Oh, yes! That!  I was trying to keep you between the buffalo and me!” I told them.

“Yes! I figured, so I went slow for you!” the man told me, smiling.

“Well, thank you! Thank you very much!  I didn’t want to end up on the wrong end of those horns!”

“Did you see the baby ones?” the lady asked me.

“I did!  I almost got trampled by them!”  I smiled and told her.

“Are you going to ride in the rain?” she asked, looking a little concerned.

“No, it will stop I think. And if not, it will be a fun ride!” I replied.  They smiled, I smiled, and we went on our way.

I saw the German couple again several minutes later as I was sitting waiting for the rain to stop.  I think they might have considered offering me a ride back to the campground. They kind of hovered a little bit and smiled before walking away  At that point I was sitting and talking to Chris, and I think he might have scared them away. 

So while the park was indeed spectacular with all of it's bizarre and weird sights,  the bizarre and weird people definitely added to the fun of it all.  Tomorrow when I am at Mount Rushmore, I think I'm going to keep an eye out for strange looking people.

I was the victim of a real life "angry birds" attack in Yellowstone.

Probably because I made fun of his eyebrows....