Good morning my dearest!
Last week-end I was with Walt, Adam and Mei in the Yellowstone National Park which is famous for its wildlife (buffalos, elks, mooses, birds of every size and colours, coyotes, squirrels and of course BEARS). We left on Friday night and decided to camp in the National Forest because in Summer the campgrounds inside the Park use to be full. On Saturday morning we had a tour of some of the most known places in the Park which surface is almost bis as Switzerland. We stopped often on the road to admire the terrific views.
Yellowstone is a "supervolcano": the surface of the Park is above a huge caldera which activity is pretty inpredictable: if the volcano exploded -I was told- half of USA would be definitely canceled.
Without any place in a campground we had to hike 8 Km and go camping in the backcountry which means at a certain distance from other people where the danger of bears is more relevant. In fact, you have to get a pe
rmission to go camping into the backcountry and you are obliged to watch a video before that which mainly explains how to react in case you see a bear or better a bear sees you, but also how to prevent a bear attack. For example you are supposed to talk during your hiking in order not to surprise the bear arriving, your food is gonna be hung at a certain height on a tree and far from your tent to avoid to attract any bears/to feed them. Fortunately, we couldn't see any bears even if I would have been happy to see one from our car. The only animals teasing during our hiking were mean mosquitos. Before getting to "our" campside we passed a nice lake and some swans and finally we went through a river and arrived... at someone else campside. Walt and Adam went looking for some wooden for the fire while Mei and I worked on assembling our tents. For dinner: cheese tortillas.At night we were so tired that in spite of the rocks underneath my pad I could sleep pretty good. Today after brushing our teeth in front of an awesome view we hiked back to our cars and we got to the canyons: I cannot remember any more amazing view in my life as the one of the big falls in the Canyons (where I met for the first time since I've been in W
Y some Italians). It's incredible to see from the top of the fall how the water flows and goes off from a huge rock...Driving back we had some other great panoramas included wildlife and boiling calderas.
After such a unique experience it feels strange to be here writing about that...
Tomorrow I'm living to the NOLS ranch since we're gonna issue a re-ration to a field (horsebackpacking) on Tuesday morning: it's gonna be the subject of my next post.
Now I'm dead tired:)
I wish you all a great beginning in your week!
see ya!
Antonella
