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 |
“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 |
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 |
“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 |
“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.
I was the victim of a real life "angry birds" attack in Yellowstone.
Probably because I made fun of his eyebrows....
If that bird only knew how nice you really are...the chocolate story made me "awwww" just a little. :)
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