Day 13

Day 13: 5/30/15 (Yellowstone to Missoula, MT)

312 miles

This morning we woke up at 5am with the hopes of seeing some wildlife.  We packed up the sleeping bags and tent in record time and were on the road.  For breakfast we had our hard boiled eggs and we attempted to heat up the bacon using the car’s vents – it sort of worked.  On the road we saw more buffalo, tons more buffalo.  We also spotted some deer, elk, and pronghorns, but we didn’t see any wolves.  As we retraced some of our route from the day before, we stopped where there had been a wildlife jam to see if the bear was still around, and sure enough, she was!  There was a whole group with their tripods set up so that was a good sign that we would see something.  The mama bear was in plain sight, but everyone was waiting to see if the cub would come down.  We waited for a little bit, but we couldn’t even see where the cub was so we didn’t stick around.  Our last stop was the Lamar Valley which we had missed the day before and we were really hoping we would see another bear or a wolf there, but it seemed that buffalo were the only ones that were easy to spot.  We finally gave up on seeing the harder-to-find animals and began making our way towards Montana.

Rico’s niece Hannah had a soccer tournament in Bozeman, a city that was halfway between Yellowstone and Missoula where they live. Rico’s brother Kevin, sister in-law Ari and nephew Isaac greeted us on the sideline. We took the opportunity to relax, catch-up, and watch Hannah play. She scored 2 of her team’s 3 goals, looks like we got a soccer star in the making. After the games we headed back to Missoula. On the way we hit a traffic jam where we eventually passed the source of the jam being a truck burnt to a crisp. Oddly enough the wooden shed that was being towed behind it was perfectly intact. In all seriousness, we hope the person made it out okay because neither of us have ever seen a car so charred. Shortly after that, we could see a rain storm in the distance and when we reached it, it hit hard – Rico was a little scared. Emerging from the storm we finally reached Missoula and were greeted by a “full-on double rainbow”. We were going to order out from Bridge pizza, but when Ari called it was going to be over a 2 hour wait; I guess it’s that good. We decided to save Bridge for another night and stopped in town for Burritos instead.

When we arrived at their house, we met Ari’s sister, Jo, and her boys. Joel, the youngest (age 5) was infatuated with Jillian and starred at her while we ate dinner, waiting to show her his dragons from his iPad game. We spent the rest of the night playing with the kids and catching up with Rico’s family.

Fact:

It's worth it to drive through a crazy and insane rainstorm when there is a beautiful rainbow on the otherside

Lesson:

Waking up at 5am to see animals is not early enough for bears and wolves - you have to be those dedicated people who camp out all night

Eat Well; Travel Often

Rico & Jillian