We’re in Great Falls, Montana, at the moment, having arrived yesterday after three night’s camping in Yellowstone and the Beartooth Mountains. Opi is at the laundromat while I hang out at our hotel, letting the boys sleep in. I don’t have the time to write a proper post, so I’ll mostly let a few pictures speak thousands of words.
Opi continues to cook up a storm, drawing on the experience of “camping” on board his sailboat for nearly two decades. Two years ago, I mostly prepared glorified backpacking meals on my trip with the boys, but this time we’re taking full advantage of the relative comforts of car camping. Before departure, we spent the better part of two days building a wooden “chuck box” to serve as the heart of an organized camp kitchen, and we’ve both been inordinately pleased with our creation. And while Opi cooks, I’ve had more time to fulfill fatherly duties like flying kites or tossing a baseball with the boys.
Tonight’s menu: grilled pork chops with baked potatoes and steamed leeks.
Top of the boys’ list of “to-do’s” in Yellowstone was to try out the new fishing rods they received from their Uncle Michael for their birthdays, so we spent two hours on Saturday scaring all the fish in Nez Perce Creek and a couple more spooking them in the Gibbon River. Come to think of it, the fish were probably more amused than terrorized by us. The boys got a lot of casting practice but not a single nibble, likely using the wrong tackle with the wrong technique in the wrong location. I was absolutely no help at all, failing miserably in my fatherly duties in this realm. Fish were rising all around us on the second afternoon, and Uncle Michael would have known what to do. Nonetheless, I did get a lot of practice untangling hopeless snarls of line, and I no longer need to consult the diagram he gave me for how to tie something on the end. I practiced enough patience to supply a lifetime of fishing trips. In the meantime, Opi went and sat on a log and read.
I’ve always thought of unsuccessful fishing as a great excuse for spending more time in locations like this one.
At any rate, Yellowstone was magnificent as usual, and I could fill paragraph after paragraph with superlatives. I have to laugh, though, that we saw three wolves about a mile from our Madison River campsite—after years of my mostly fruitless effort over a half-dozen visits with students to see Yellowstone’s wolves (hiring expert guides, getting up in the wee hours to be in position at dawn, waiting patiently for hours in freezing temperatures), these three might as well have walked up and introduced themselves.
The boys agree that thermal features, like campfires, are more watchable than television, even static ones like Grand Prismatic Spring.
After two nights at Madison River, we camped in a delightful Shoshone National Forest site up in the Beartooths, right under the two iconic peaks known as the Bear’s Ears. Somehow I neglected to take pictures, probably because I was too busy enjoying a few Father’s Day beers with my Dad and poking at the campfire with my boys. I won’t need pictures to remember this night.
That’s enough for now . . . it’s time to leave Great Falls and head north into Canada. Hope everyone is doing well at home. Mom, we miss you!
postcards from the outback 