Madison Campground, Yellowstone Park: 48 degrees – 6:30 AM.
We drove an hour to get out of the park at the North gate.
We were in Gardiner, Montana, the tiny part of Yellowstone that is in Montana.
We were pleasantly surprised when we got into the town of Gardiner; it was
really cute! There were lots of touristy shops amongst others…a custom saddle
shop, antique shop, etc. We were looking for Flying Pig where we were to sign
in for our full-day trail ride. I was in desperate need of caffeine, so we
found a really great little coffee shop where I could get a 16 oz. coffee for
1.25—good deal! The coffee was tasty, too. The girl at Flying Pig gave us
directions to Hell’s A Roarin’ ranch where we would go on our trail ride. It
was about 7 miles on a dirt road and straight up a mountain. The ranch was
small because they use the National Forest trails right next to the ranch;
seems to work out well for them. Every building was brand new, beautiful and
had an awesome view. The bathrooms were outside but just as nice as any
bathroom I’d ever seen. We signed some waivers and got instructions from the
cowboys, who are all college students living here for the summer(my dream job)!
We got on our horses and headed for the gates out of the ranch with our cowboy,
Jack. He was a 19 year old, going to college in Montana and was born and raised
in Montana. Chris and Jack found a lot to talk about over the first couple
hours on the trail. Chris was on a horse named 8-Ball. 8-Ball was acting up and
didn’t seem like a good choice to take out on the trail. We rode up a hill
through two gates and at the second gate, 8 ball spooked and Chris was not
expecting it AT ALL and he fell off…onto a rocky area. Luckily, he’s okay, but
it was scary for him and the first time he fell off a horse. Jack went down and
got Chris a new horse. I was on a Paint mare named Fiddler who had a foal about
5 months ago. They said she needed to lose some weight so they were using her
as much as possible on the trails. Chris’s new horse was named Rock Slide, for
no particular reason, luckily!
We rode for about 3 hours. First, we went almost to the top
of a mountain and traveled right along the edge of rocky cliffs. If we had
signed up for a trail ride in the Grand Canyon, we would have cancelled…this
was terrifying enough. The horse flies started to get bad for the horses. We
were in the middle of nowhere. We went to an area to eat lunch and tied the
horses to trees. I’d like to think Teddy is a bomb proof horse, but horses out
here are completely different. They took the wind and the rocks and the flies
like they were nothing. Rock Slide was some sort of draft cross and our guide
was on a 6 year old Paint named Pat. For a six year old-he was awesome. You
could throw the reins around his neck and tell him to stay and he would. Jack
told us he’s chased bears and shot bears off Pat and Pat does it all(Chris’s
dream). We were pretty sore after these few hours, so we decided to head back.
It took us only 2 hours to get back because we must have run into a newly
hatched horse fly area-the horses had dozens of flies on them and it started to
bother them. They were almost trotting back. Overall, we had an enjoyable ride.
We got to see things in Montana that we’d never get to see on foot or by car.
We decided to check out Gardiner with the rest of the
afternoon. The gift shops were really neat and Chris found a buffalo fur cowboy
hat at the custom saddle shop, so he treated himself-it looks nice! He’s well
on his way to becoming a real cowboy-now he just needs spurs and chaps…and a
horse. J
Cowboys Lodge Grille is where we stopped for dinner. It was
owned by a Native American looking family-we both had ribs. The food was yummy!
I tried Moose Drool beer and Chris got the Salmon Fly rye ale. They both were
good, but Chris’s was better. We picked up a six pack at the gas station and a
few groceries before heading back to camp.
We went to the Old Faithful Inn to shower. When we got
there, we saw a bunch of people up by Old Faithful. We decided to stroll up and
see if Old Faithful was erupting. Sure enough, we couldn’t have planned it any
better if we had actually planned it-O.F. erupted and it was beautiful, as you’ll
see in the pictures. We were so lucky to have to wait just a few short minutes
to see it.
The Inn was magnificent. There was a lot to do in the Inn
itself. We showered and headed back to our campsite. It was so nice having a
night to actually relax. We started a fire and roasted marshmallows.
**Word of warning** I saw the square marshmallows and
thought they were ingenious, so I bought them. It fits perfectly on a graham
cracker when making a s’more. However, they usually melt off the stick before
you can get them on the graham cracker. It’s a novel idea, but nothing beats
the real marshmallow. We’re in search of regular marshmallows now.
We decided we are going to sleep in tomorrow and not set any
alarms…it’s been an extremely busy week!
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