53 Days to go....

Mule deer outside our window

Since our last posting our forest fire "Beach Fire" has been extinguished.  The fire fighters have moved on.  They had made a small city over in the Fishing Bridge area with yurts, trailers, huge commercial vans and people.  It was quite an amazing sight.


Outside of bad weather the last couple of weeks have been pretty low key.  Xanterra ( the company we work for) gave out free tickets to the Buffalo Bill Museum in Cody, so we spent a day in the museum.  I had been there before but it is a great spot.  If you are ever in Cody be sure to take some time to visit.  You could easily spend 2 days there.  We were only there one day but it was fun.  We had lunch and ate on their outdoor patio.  It was glorious, no mosquitoes.  In fact, I think sitting on the patio and enjoying the sun was probably the most relaxing part of the trip.

Mule deer behind our neighbors RV

There was a bear attack outside the park near Cooke City early this month.  One man was killed and a couple of other folks injured.  Then, here in Yellowstone, they had to euthanize a black bear that had become a problem in the back country camping areas.  I can tell you that, now when we tell the guests our "bear speech"  they actually listen.  They aren't so quick to ignore us.  The lack of common sense of these folks when it comes to the animals is amazing.  For all the injuries we hear about, it is a wonder more are not attacked.  I have seen them chase a grizzly bear into the woods, with their kids right behind, just to take a photo.  It is fascinating..

Wild Bill at Wild Bill's Museum

Last week we had some excitement with the fugitives from AZ.  On Sunday night (we had worked the morning shift) one of our co workers came to warn us about the fact that the fugitives had been sighted in Yellowstone.  Since there is no TV service, we don't get the news and were totally unaware of these folks.  So we started searching the internet and what we found was disconcerting.  That night at the campground there was a huge law enforcement presence.  There were rangers and US marshal's going through the campground and talking to the campers.  According to the rumors, they had used the pay phone outside of our registration office.  We all had pictures of them posted on our computer monitors the following day.  The photos looked like any one of hundred folks we check in daily.  We were glad to hear the reports that one had been captured and the other two had moved on.  I think we will keep the shotgun handy for the time being.

The park has been setting attendance records both in June and July.  Our co-workers who have been here in prior years say this is the busiest they have seen.  GREAT!!!  And this weekend the park has its "Fee Free Weekend".  I can hardly wait to see the number of cranky people we have to turn away.  This is a "heads up" for anyone heading to Yellowstone.  Make reservations...................

On the road from Cody to Yellowstone

The weather lately has been rain, thunderstorms, hail and more thunderstorms.  A normal day includes at least 4 power outages and 4 phone lines outages.... this makes for a very bad day trying to work on the computer system.  This old system has problems on a day without outages.


Last night however, we were able to watch a few shooting stars from the Perseid meteor shower.  We were too tired to stay up until the "optimum viewing" time.  That was to be about 3AM.  But we did manage to see about 10 small ones.  Tonight we work until 10PM, so we will check it out after work.

Sunset on Lake Yellowstone

Hope you all are enjoying your summer...  be sure to look up tonight maybe you will see a shooting star.