Yellowstone, Day 4

On our final day at Yellowstone, we visited the Museum of the National Park Ranger, which proved to be much more interesting than I thought it would be.  The museum was located in an old log building dating to the early 20^th century and was once used as an outlying station for soldiers on patrol.  (We learned that these soldiers were the precursors of the modern-day Park Rangers.)  It had been completely rebuilt using original materials.  The burls on the lodgepole pine columns on the front porch, like those in the Old Faithful Inn, were especially interesting. 

 

From there we drove to Mammoth Hot Springs for our daily picnic, across from the Hotel where our Yellowstone in a Day Tour had begun.  There was a historical village there that we had not had time to visit before the tour began, and we had ample time to see the Visitors Center and the many original buildings, most of them still occupied by Rangers and their families.

There was a beautiful post office building, too, that we were told in the Visitors Center had been forced to close a few days ago because an elk had taken up a position on the front steps and would not move.  There were no elk visible today, but it was a frequent visiting place for them and we saw signs of their presence everywhere out on the broad green lawns between the buildings.

 

The chapel (ca. 1913) was beautiful, too, still in use but unfortunately locked up today.

 

 

We continued on around the Grand Loop Road north and east from the Hotel, our destination an event at the Roosevelt Corral that evening.  On the way, we took a detour onto an unpaved road called the Blacktail Plateau Drive that proved to be a little rougher on our Mini than we had anticipated.  We were rewarded by seeing a large bison grazing along the end of the road.  From there, we stopped at the Petrified Tree.  The tree was an ancient one related to modern-day redwoods that had been buried in ash, water, and sand when a volcano erupted 50 million years ago.  Before it had rotted, silica in the volcanic flow plugged its still-living cells, creating “forests of stone,” this one still standing sentinel along the road.

 

We stopped at a Ranger Station just up the road and asked if there were any other sights in the immediate area before our event this evening, and he told us about Calcite Falls.  “Prepare to be amazed!” he said, a phrase that could be used again and again in this park filled with many wonders of nature.  We parked at the pull-off area and walked a short distance to look out on the falls and were, well . . . amazed.

 

Finally, we arrived at the Roosevelt Corral, where Martha had arrange for us to have a chuck wagon  cookout.  We had worked up an appetite by this time of evening, and the description, written in a kind of Cowboy English, had sounded intriguing: 

Grab the saddles and hitch up the wagon for an evening you won’t soon forget. You can ride out to Pleasant Valley on a horse or in a covered wagon. When you arrive you’ll find those cooks dishin’ up some real cowboy grub at our popular Old West Dinner Cookout.  The coffee’s brewin’ over the open campfire, and our wranglers love talkin’ your ears off over a strong “cup o’ Joe!” When we ring the “dinner bell”, you’ll line up for real western beef steaks cooked to order, our signature Roosevelt Baked Beans, potato salad, coleslaw, cornbread muffins, and fruit crisp. And if all this is not enough, you’ll find your boots tappin’ to old western songs sung by our singin’ cowboy. You may have come here as a city slicker, but you’ll go back as a regular cowpoke!

Real cowboy “grub” would hit the spot.  We opted for the covered wagon ride to the site of the cookout rather than horses, although a group of 25 or so folks had saddled up and they departed shortly before the rest of us sorted ourselves out and climbed into several covered wagons.

 

Our horses were a matching pair of Gray Percherons named (unsurprisingly) Rowdy and Rebel, and our woman driver knew them well.
 

She and an assistant carried on an interesting narrative while we all crossed the road and followed a dusty dirt trail into sagebrush.  Bison were grazing along the trail – one of them a baby (which we learned were called red dogs) – and it was a beautiful time of evening.  About halfway to our destination, though, the dark clouds gathering on the horizon arrived overhead and we found ourselves in a rain shower.  We were in the second seat back from the front and were getting a little wet as the rain came down harder and harder, and the driver and her assistant were in a matter of minutes soaked to the skin.  The driver had given her poncho to a couple in the first seat from the front.  We pulled the canvas sides of the wagon down, to little avail.  But eventually the rain let up and then stopped completed as we arrived at the site of the cookout.  The sun came out, and in just a few minutes we all started to dry off a little.   

The rain had settled the dust, and the air was tangy with that wonderful mineral after-the-rain fragrance which I have learned is called petrichor (a beautiful word).  As we climbed down from the wagons and walked over to a covered picnic pavilion and several tables out in the sun (which we chose), we could also smell the promised "western beef steaks cooked to order."  The steaks were the largest I have ever seen.  We asked for a couple of chicken breasts instead of the beef and the young man handling the grilling gladly obliged.  It was a delicious dinner, as most al fresco dinners are, and the Cowboy Beans were especially good.

It was a cross-section of America, I realized, the young and the old, the fit and the unfit, all enjoying fellowship with complete strangers, sitting here and there, getting to know each other (“Where are you from?  Is it your first visit to Yellowstone?”)  I felt good about living in a country like this! A place where there is such camaraderie.  Where we can all call each other "pardner."

 

As daylight faded, a very good guitarist/singer (the “singin cowboy”) serenaded us with many songs, mostly of the Country and Cowboy variety, told some hilarious stories, and then encouraged us all to join in the singalong:

Happy trails to you,
Until we meet again.
Happy trails to you,
Keep smiling until then.
Who cares about the clouds when we're together?
Just sing a song, and bring the sunny weather.
Happy trails to you,
Until we meet again.