Tourist town
One thing I forgot to mention in the last post was the smoke. The last night I was hiking into the evening, the lake I crossed halfway into my hike was covered in smoke, the sun blotted red like an apocalyptic ending. There are definitely days that are more clear than others, but that night was pretty dense.
Anyway, the next morning I woke up with the others and made breakfast. It was pretty cold. But all was well because we were going through old faithful village. Even though I had just gone day the day before, this time I planned to actually spend some time there and be a tourist. Hobo Toe and I were going to rocket the 13 miles to town and then walk around the geysers and just relax for half a day. Although, our permits were for a camp 10 miles from the village, so we had to be somewhat mindful of that.
What a wonderful day it was. We had a blast goofing off and walking around. The geysers and natural environment are genuinely beautiful; even if they do have boardwalks with viewing areas and benches all over with thousands of people walking around.
We went to the visitor center as their was an outlet outside the door. We went full hiker trash, and not more than 250 feet away from Old Faithful, we pulled out all our wet stuff from the rain the last few days. Tents, sleeping bags, pads, jackets, socks. Most of our packs really. Laid them fully out on the ground on the sun.
To my pleasant surprise, not a single person or ranger said anything. I felt a little bad, but at the same time, it needed to be done, and we had to sit there while we were charging anyway.
The only times anyone spoke to us, one fella passed by and simply said “been there” (referring to rainy camps). A ranger stopped and chatted about the trail and how cool he thought it was and so on. And finally, a kid passed by and asked his mom if we were camping there, so which she replied “they’re just drying their stuff”. So all in all, it was actually quite a positive experience and no one was annoyed at us taking over half the ground outside the visitor center.
Thankfully, a nice bell person at the Old Faithful Lodge let us leave our packs by their desk to keep eyes on it. To be honest, hikers never really leave their packs anywhere other than a locked hotel room. However, we didn’t want to be lugging our packs around or have to deal with taking them on and off, etc.
And so the day continued. We saw two hikers and started chatting with them. Then two more popped up, then another few. Eventually, there were about 12 hikers all congregated ready to watch old faithful go off. As well as another few hundred people.
I’m between stuffing my face with as much (barely better than cafeteria) food as I could eat, I got a couple days worth for the hike ahead.
The trail gets a been funky from this point for a couple hundred miles. Technically, it goes out the west side of Yellowstone NP and along the Montana and Idaho border before heading north up towards Butte. However, a majority of that line is covered in fire closures right now. The official reroute it a 140 mile road walk on pavement along a highway. 30 miles on pavement isn’t fun, let alone 140.
Most hikers are headed out northern Yellowstone NP and making their way to Big Sky and eventually Butte. I decided I wanted to at least finish off Wyoming along the trail, and get into Idaho just for 10-15 miles before heading into Montana, so I decided to continue along the CDT out the west side, and then hop off the trail in the town of West Yellowstone (which is not the National Park, and in Montana) and the connect trails to Big Sky from there.
Hobo Toes was originally going to go the northern route, but he too decided he wanted to at least tag the Idaho border for a minute, and decided to come my route (not technically allowed as he wasn’t permitted for it, but we found out all the hikers were going to be at the same campground, so figured it couldn’t hurt).
Eventually we begin our way out of town and start the hike out. Since the trail literally goes through the village, the mile count began immediately. We can even walk along the boardwalk and see the rest of the geysers on the way out.
As we’re making our way, we also run into River Dance. We’re all leaving a bit late, now about 5:30p, so we decide it’s best to all hike together incase we can’t make the campground and have to “stealth camp”.
It’s funny how not even a half mile away from the nearest attraction, the trail gets completely unused by anyone other than CDT hikers, and there’s not another soul out there.
We make it about 6 of the 10 miles and decide to camp for the night. While we’re technically not allowed to, we didn’t want to hike into the dark, giving us time to properly setup camp and hang our food. This was going to be the last night in Wyoming, as well as Yellowstone NP.
Since we dry camped, when we all woke up and headed out we decided to go to the lake (where we were supposed to camp) and get water before hitting the border about 6 miles after the lake.
It’s super cold this morning, and after I get my water and let my tent lay out in the sun a bit (lots of condensation last night) I get a bit chilly and decide to hike on to the border.
When I finally get there, Hobo Toe pops up only about a minute after I get there. He’s definitely a bit faster than me, but we keep a similar pace most the time. We chat a bit waiting for River Dance to get there. We decide to take one of the alternates to get down to a road to hitch into West Yellowstone. Theres about a dozen different ways you can get up to Big Sky, and neither of us had really figured out exactly which way we were going, so decided to make our way into town, take a day off to plan and rest, then head up towards Big Sky together.
The only thing about this plan, is it would make it a 31 mile day. With an easy grade, the lure of a day off, and we started talking about Chinese food which the stomach churned for, we decided to go for it.
Keeping up a fast pace (me barely keeping up, at about 3.5 mph) we push the miles. It was an easy trail, which eventually turned into an old road. But to prevent cars from still using it, they dug dozens of moats and mounds to block the way, which were a bit annoying. It was quite boring. The smoke was pretty thick again, not any views, but still town. So we pushed on.
Eventually we get to the road and start our hitch into town. Not waiting there more than 10 minutes, a van passed us, and a minute or two later has come back and turns around to get us. Another rarity! That has never happened to me before, and now is the second time on this trip that it has. That’s pretty neat. Balances out all the frustrating ones I’ve had I suppose!
These two are headed back to Bozeman where they live after a week or two traveling in their van. They were nice enough to drop us right at our hotel (which I had to call about 20 to find one for less than 280 a night! Most were around 360… but this town was the closest to Yellowstone NP, and the Old Faithful Lodge is well over 450/night. With every normal person having a car here, it’s easy to get to the park from here so all the prices are crazy high.
As soon as we check in at the Pioneer Motel, we drop our stuff and head to the Chinese restaurant to feast. We each get two main dishes and split a third as well as an appetizer. How delicious it was. And surprisingly, while full, we didn’t feel stuffed like we should have for consuming so much food. Either way, we were happy. And then got ice cream on the way back to the room to shower and go to bed.
Goodbye both Wyoming and Idaho. Welcome to Montana. The final state on the CDT.
