June 16: Josh, Rachel, and my Bozeman

Today I showed Rachel and Josh around Yellowstone. They are friends of Johnny G’s gal Andrea and are moving up to Seattle and had a half day to spare in the park. We met up around 930am in Mammoth and the weather was pretty rotten at first. The rain came around 900am or so and it was brutal. Dark clouds as if it were nighttime, huge rain drops and lots of them. 10-15 seconds in it and you were soaked all the way through. Then, the signature of Yellowstone….. the weather changed before you could say “Huckleberry ice cream.” Has anyone ever had huckleberry ice cream?? Its sooooo good. We sell huckleberry everything up this way, its local so they exploit the shit out of it. A small bag of huckleberry yogurt covered pretzels is $8. You might get 12 pretzels. I mean, Im sure theyre good, but cmon. $8?? Huckleberry ice cream is unreal though. Worth every penny. Speaking of ice cream being worth every penny, I was talking to Nas, she is from Singapore and a server assistant in OF Inn. She was telling me that Ben & Jerrys Ice Cream is a major delicacy in Singapore. It costs like $15 - $20 a pint. She said she went to walmart and saw it for the prices we US citizens are used to and freaked out. Back to June 16… The rain stopped within 10 minutes and it was sunny. I thought the weather changed in STL?? It is so ridiculous here. The forecast literally means nothing. At Old Faithful it could be snowing sideways, and at Mammoth (50 miles away) or even Lake (25 – 30 miles away), it could be 75 and sunny, happens all the time. Between the differences in elevation and the size of the park, you really have no idea how its gonna be when you go for a drive. I think the geo thermal activity has to have something to do with it. Probably not, but it sounds interesting. So they hopped in my car and I took them directly to Canyon. When we got there it was 65 and sunny. Perfect. We walked around artists lookout, took some pictures, and even got lucky seeing a bull elk leaving the area. We set out for lake area, saw a grizzly on the way, but it was through the trees, still, count it. We stopped and took in some great views of the lake and the surrounding mountains. After that we took the road back to OF stopping at the Continental Divide and Keplar Cascades for photo opps. We pulled up at OF and hurried in to see when it was going off next. 30 minutes. Perfect. Plenty of time to get a good seat on the mezzanine of OFI with a cup of coffee to take it in. My friend Lucy from the UK who is a server in the restaurant and her boyfriend who happens to be from Missouri visiting her for a few days were on the mezzanine to watch OF as well, so we all sat on a bench getting to know each other until it went off. During this time, the weather changed again on us. It cooled off about 15 degrees and was threatening rain. It really worked out bc the pics Rachel took show OF going off with dark rain clouds behind it. I had never seen that and I think its one of my favorite looks of OF. As the geyser was winding down, we decided to beat the crowd to the restaurant in OFI to get a bite to eat. We took our time bc it started raining and eating at the Inn is pretty cool. I basically forced them to try this huckleberry ice cream, boom goes the dynamite. The next stop was grand prismatic spring. Grand prismatic is the spring you think of when you think of Yellowstone, a big blue pool with green and yellow/orange around the outer rim. Its huge. The down side of grand prismatic when the temperature is as cold as it is now is the amount of thick steam. So much steam that you cant get a very good look at the colors or the spring as a whole. The up side is that the warm steam is plentiful, when it comes off the pool it hovers onto the walkways and keeps you warm, until the wind changes. It feels so good when you are in the steam. It doesn’t smell like sulphur there either. It was funny walking up to GP, everyones hair walking the other way was soaked from the steam. We walked around for a little bit, realized what time it was, and got back on the road. It was getting pretty late in the afternoon, so we cancelled all other stops and went straight back to Mammoth. From there we followed each other north to the town of Livingston Montana where we parted ways, myself to Bozeman and Rachel and Josh onto Glacier National Park for the night.

 

That night in Bozeman Johnny, Robbie, Garrett and myself went to a house of a restaurant called Dave’s Sushi. Don’t let the name fool you, it was right on. The place was small and off the beaten path, you would have to ask someone where to get great sushi in Bozeman, which is exactly what Johnny did when he arrived that day. Warm sake, great rolls, lots of laughs… it sucked. From there we went to main st to the wine bar and then the zebra lounge. The wine bar is so awesome. Zebra lounge was a basement of a place with good music and everybody dancing. It was fun, but by the time I got there I was so pooped out from running around all day, I just sat and relaxed with Johnny all night. Other OFI employees were in Bozeman that night and we all met up at the Zebra Lounge. 2 girls who are servers at the Inn who are friends who came here together from NC, a server named Josh from NY, and a guy named Christian but I don’t really know him that well. People watching is awesome in MT. So many different kinds of people. This one girl kept getting hit on and asked to dance, and every guy who danced with her would spin her all over the dance floor, dip her, try to be fancy in a graphic tee. Needless to say, the music playing was not conducive to such moves. So if one guy did it, I would have written it off. But Im talking like 4 or 5 guys. It was just bizarre. Some cowboys and cowgirls showed up, some thuggish ruggish, Zebra Lounge draws quite a diverse group. Montana, you continue to amaze me. After Zebra Lounge, I was done. I went back to the room and crashed. Hard.