Thursday August 19

Walked around the legendary fly shops in West Yellowstone in the am. Talked a bit with fishing legend Craig Mathews at Blue Ribbon Fly Shop about my Alaskan adventure. Pretty cool, guys a legendary fishing author on the Yellowstone area.

It has always been a dream to share Yellowstone with my family so I was thrilled to be meeting my sister and Ian at the Mecca of Nature, The Old Faithful Inn, in the middle of the park. If you’ve never been to Yellowstone, you need to go. It is a must see place before you die. The combination of fabulous fishing, geysers, animals, and scenery is unsurpassed. Let me say this one more time. YOU need to go to Yellowstone.

I was blessed to share the place with some of the people I love the most. It was a blast to fire stories about our summers back and forth for a few hours before heading outside.

Checked out the many geysers around the Inn first. Walking along the path this chick nearly flattens me screaming, “Look Out! Beehive Geyser is going to blow any minute, Run!” I was like whoa…..this lady is nutty and …..I probably need to find Beehive Geyser. Turns out this gal was a proud member of the Geyser Gazers (nice name). They were a “spectrumy” group of folks who sat around all summer waiting and watching the geysers blow off. Sorry, but they were all total nerd balls. Got talking to one gazer who knew pretty much everything about every geyser in the park. He planned out our walking route and was right on the money with all the eruptions.

Before leaving the park for the day we booked a 2 hour horse back riding excursion for Saturday morning. I’d never ridden a horse before and was already nervous about it.

Saw elk and Bison all over the place leaving the park. Had pizza in West Yellowstone before sharing my home on wheels with sis and Ian. I’d never had more than 2 people sleep in the camper before and was pleased to know that the table really did go down and form a pretty nice bed. For some reason I had dreams of 18 wheelers passing by in the night.