| Vacation 2009 (10 of 21) : |
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Today was the best day of the vacation. It was mostly warm and sunny and most importantly I think we all slept OK last night. We've learnt how cold it gets and adjusted to the conditions. At the start of the hike today it was raining a little and the weather looked a little menacing. However it turned into a fine day. Sunny and warm.
Mt Washburn is billed as one of the most populare day hikes in the park. It's a 3 mile/1500 foot climb from the road to the watchtower on the summit. Remarkably it's an old stage coach road. Quite why the road was ever surfaced is a mistery to me. Not much remains of the bitumen. The trail is well graded and easy going. It took about 1½ hours to climb the trail and 1 hour to get back. Penny and the kids went north from the watchtower back to the road and we picked them up with the cars.
We went for a little drive in the park to Roosevelt Tower. I'm not too sure what's special about this place. Anyway we had some coffee and drove back to the campsite. Along the way we stopped to take a photograph of a pelican in the river. The other's amazingly saw a wolf and some bears. We think there was a carcass which had attracted the animals.
The ranger talk tonight was about the history of some place names in the park. Like all the talks, it was really good. The National Park Ranger Service attracts interesting people who are good at explaining things to the public.
John joined us overnight. He'd a physics exam at college this week. His folks collected him from Cody airport about 80 miles east of Yellowstone last night. So now everybody's here. We were 10 on the train, then Rich joined us by car from Seattle and now John has arrived. Nadine and Sally will leave us on Sunday to reduce us to 10. Rich is driving back to Seattle when we leave Grand Teton, so we'll be 9 on the train going home.
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