I hadn’t see as much as I wanted of Glacier in just one day and Tim felt like we needed to move on. So the next morning we planned to head into the park one last time to hike St. Mary and Virginia falls. It meant another early start around 5am. About half of the kids said they were planning to stay home and sleep until we got back. But when morning came, the FOMO (fear of missing out) overtook everyone and we all piled into the van in the dusky pre-dawn light. Zippy didn’t make it too far. We took turns passing her tired little body around as we hiked before she finally succumbed completely on top of Tim’s head as she road his shoulders.
The falls were beautiful and everyone was glad we had made the extra push to do it that morning. Micah had a moment of teenage rebellion that suffered him some consequences. At St. Mary falls there was a downed log across the bottom half of the falls. He began to walk over when Tim and I both stopped him, telling him it was way too dangerous. Being the average 14 year old that he was, he insisted we were wrong and that it would all be fine if we would just let him cross over. He wouldn’t fall, and even if he did, he would be able to swim right out. We are at a stage in his life that he argues with us about EVERYTHING and today was no exception. We went back and forth about the matter before we told him it was no longer up for discussion. A few moments later, he brazenly walked across the roaring falls with a smug look of “told you I could” on his face. A shining example of obedience to his younger siblings to boot. Micah had to enjoy our travels the next few days through boring country with no technology, which is a heavy price to pay for a teenage boy. There was lot of moping that day but hopefully he’ll take us seriously next time.
It made me happy to squeeze in one last hike before we moved on. I have to admit I have a lot of issues with missing out on things (plenty of FOMO going on right here - note whale-missing incident back a few weeks ago) and I want to see it ALL. Especially if I felt like it was something I had invested a lot of effort or money to see and do. I had to laugh at myself as we hauled it to the shuttle after MacDonald Lake the day before. I was done with sitting on the beach and ready to see more of the park. I forged ahead while everyone trailed behind me like a row of ducks, taking their sweet time. Occasionally I would pick up a small child and drag it along in an effort to move people along a little faster. A memory of my dad popped into my head. We were at Colonial Williamsburg in VA. His head was bent over a map, hair sticking out at each side, socks with sandals (obviously the coolest foot choice for the south) on his feet, as he hustled at least 20 feet ahead of my mom and I and my 3 younger brothers. Mom called futility to him to wait up but he couldn’t hear us. He HAD to see every. last. thing. Gosh darn it, he had used his modest income and his limited time off to get us all here and he was going to make sure it was worth it. We wouldn’t miss a thing, even if it only meant a brief glimpse, we had seen it and that was all that mattered. I am just like my dad, and I have seen it more and more as the years go by. Poor Tim thought he was marrying my easy-going, sweet-tempered, non-confrontational mother when we first got together. But the Bob Cooke in me has become more and more apparent the older I get, and he’s not the easy one out of the two, I think he will readily admit.
We changed into shorts on a hot stop in Montana only to have it snow a few hours later!
We were concerned about finding camping near Yellowstone since we were hitting it over the weekend so we scrambled to get showers and laundry and packing up done back at Chewing Black Bones. I thought it was pretty good that we pulled out by 10am after all that following our morning hike. Of course the ones inside the National Park had long been booked. Tim tried several spots outside a few different entrances on the north side with no luck. We were told that we couldn’t even camp on the north eastern side because we had a soft-sided camper. Apparently that area only allows hard sided campers because there have been too many bear fatalities - bears climbing right into tents and even ripping through the canvas pullouts on campers just like ours. I had found a few dispersed options but there weren’t many - the
only thing we could really do was press on and hope that there was a site or two somewhere. We pushed hard to get there before dark, not wanting a repeat of driving down a dark and scary road in desperation to find sleep. Both of the first come/first served that we stopped at were full. We continued past the last one on a road that had camping allowed off to the side. It went up a gravel road, high above Gardiner, MT.
Washboarding switch backs most of the way. Pull out after pull out already had a camper settled in for the night. I always get a little nervous heading down these roads in our rig. The can has been great but I really wish it had 4 wheel drive. 4 wheel drive makes me feel so much more invincible on unpredictable roads. In the van I worry about what’s up ahead and if it will be possible to turn around if things aren’t looking so good. A narrow, winding, dirt road is cause for concern when there’s no way to really see what lies ahead. We passed one spot that was occupied but had plenty of space on one end. It was a small tent and it seemed unfair to intrude with our large and noisy group so far out in a spot where it’s obvious you chose it for its space and solitude. However, several miles down and there was nothing except a sign telling us there were possible sites 5.5 miles down Bear Creek Road. We decided intrusion was really the only option for tonight and turned our beast around before crossing the bridge to Bear Creek. The following night someone had scooted their car and tent even further into the pullout past our camper and we made a threesome, so we weren’t the only ones having a hard time finding room to sleep outside of Yellowstone on the weekend.
As we got settled that night, we realized that a fuse had blown and several lights were out. As Tim worked to get it fixed, suddenly the entire camper was out. No electricity at all. It looked like it hadn’t been keeping the fridge going either, as the fish we had stored in our freezer was beginning to thaw. Poor Tim spent the rest of the evening struggling with limited data trying to look up a reason for the outage and why all the obvious solutions weren’t working. Then we wondered what it would take to get it fixed so all of our food wouldn’t spoil. Doing without lights was one thing, but our coolers were full of fish and the fridge needed to work so we could continue to rotate the fish between cooler and freezer and our food for the next few days would stay edible. We were a little far from any possible RV repair places that may have parts or advice… at last after some fiddling, unknown to Tim what really ended up working, we had it so the fridge half of the camper had electricity. The half with the table would have to remain in darkness. For whatever reason, it wouldn’t allow us to have the entire camper up and running. We settled for better than nothing. It would make meal times and hanging out more challenging as that was all of our “living space” but it is what it is for now.
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