Hooray – we slept in until 7:30! The next site over, which is closer to the creek, opened and we upgraded for our second night in Yellowstone. I am currently sitting creekside (my view is the picture of the water, which I just took!), watching a group of fly fishermen, with my feet resting on a log. Ahhhh! I’m starting to relax. No organizing in the Sprinter, no traffic jams, no crowds of tourists, no scrambling for our next campsite. Blueberry pancakes for breakfast and no plans for the day – life is good. I sat by the water and read background info on upcoming parks, while Deven constructed bug screens to cover the windows at night. After a few hours of relaxing, Deven came up with a master plan for rearranging the Sprinter. We moved some of our “furniture” (bins, cooler, refrigerator, etc.) around, Deven built in a little counter, and I (of course) organized the contents of a few messy bins. I think this might be the final rearranging – everything has a convenient, secure place…for real this time! We were hoping to stay out of the car for the day so we headed out on the bikes, hoping to ride to a trailhead not too far down the dirt road. After riding down the road for a few minutes, we both started thinking this wasn’t a great idea. We had seen bears in this area several times and after playing the not-so-fun game of coming up with an exit strategy in case a 400 – 800 pound grizzly came at us running 30-40 mph from different directions, we decided to cut our ride short. As Deven put it, “a bicyclist in bear country is pretty much fast food!” On our ride back, Deven spotted a fire and called it into the Ranger Station. The wind was starting to pick up and the flames were visible from our campsite, but the helicopters came within minutes. We watched as the helicopter made several trips to the nearby lake to dip the bucket in and spray it on the fire. Soon, a ranger came around and said the fire was contained and that we weren’t in any danger. After earning her Smokey the Bear patch for the day, Deven went back to building things in the Sprinter, I sat with a glass of wine by the water and read. We made dinner, sat by the campfire, and called it a night.
