July 17 and 18 - More Park City and on to Yellowstone

July 17 – Park City – Paddleboarding virginity lost, First Sticker!

Our final day in Park City we really didn’t do anything in the morning. Sort of wiped out from all the fun already had and such we sat on our butts all morning.

I caught up with work and had to reset my phone to factory settings to get it to work again.   Since I got it I had not been able to download any photos so it was clogged with 8 gigabytes of videos and images. Apparently this caused the phone to overwrite some necessary lookup tables.  These tables contained important information for the phone to contact the cell towers and joila – no service.

I was able to download all the photos and images via wifi to my computer and Republic Wireless reset my phone.

Finally, inertia becoming dangerous, Eve suggested we go paddle boarding. We bundled into the car and headed to the resort lake and rented paddle boards for an hour.  Since nobody in our group had ever done this, it was a great way to spend an afternoon. Max got it immediately, his canoeing skill showing. We were all able to get up on the boards, even Binh and we paddled around, chasing ducklings and looking at the big gold fish.

In downtown Park City we splurged on two stickers – one for the car and one for the camper – continuing  the age old tradition of defacing things you own with crap you buy at souvenir shops.

July 18 – Driving from Park City to Yellowstone via Pocatello

We took off from Park City at around 9am, everyone rested, with a 7 hour drive ahead of us to our campground reservation in Yellowstone.  Hugs were had all around and we said goodbye to the Roncals and the Sacks on their way back to San Fran and DC.

We said goodbye to Temple Square and the Mormons. We saw some great graffiti near Ogden where teenagers tagged a building with Welcome Home signs for young members of the LDS returning from Missions. See photo.

We had a few different ways to go to Yellowstone.  Google maps, Honda GPS and Garmin GPS seemed to disagree on the best route.  We let them vote and took I15 north, bypassing the Grand Tetons.  Yes, I know what you are saying – “you skipped the Grand Tetons? As a man, you can never skip something called Big Tits”. But hauling the camper up mountains has not been easy and we wanted to arrive at Yellowstone with enough time to set up camp.   I wasn’t so sure hauling the camper up and down mountains would be so much fun and we knew we wouldn’t have much time in Jackson anyway so we skipped it and drove west and north heading for the West Entrance to Yellowstone instead of the South Entrance.

And even taking the supposed faster route, we still arrived around 6pm.

We stopped in Pocatello, Idaho and stopped by the Idaho Museum of Natural History, looking at skeletons of ancient creatures including the Giant Sloth – my new favorite candidate for resurrection through DNA cloning, despite the fact that I have no idea if any DNA for this ridiculously scary-looking creature exists.

We bought some stickers for the car and the camper at Idaho Unlimited and continued on our merry way to Yellowstone.

We arrived in Yellowstone and immediately saw a large Bison, like a giant mount of moving dirt. Like everyone else arriving, we slowed down to view it and this process was repeated a few times, leading to a slow moving traffic jam.  We saw a few more bison, culminating in a giant male rumbling alongside our car, his massive head weaving back and forth like a giant puppet and his giant brown testicles staring us in the face (you cannot unsee this).  He looked majestic and sad like he was carrying a great burden on his way to a porn shoot.

Bridge Bay campground wasn’t really what I like in a campground- very open. Binh said it reminded her of refugee camp she stayed in in Pennsylvania when she arrived in the US from Vietnam. She wasn’t trying to be cruel, but the campground is very open with all the campers, tents and whatnot spread out across a large field. It wasn’t bad and the bathrooms were clean and nice.

But it was the only reservation we could get and we planned to wake up early and head to Norris Campground, which is first come first serve. We had been told that it filled by 9:30 am the previous day so we planned to wake at 6am to get a site.  This kind of sucked. But, hey, you do what you must.