The Other White Meat

Here's a fossil of Archaeotherium, a large piglike animal that hunted small animals and also ate plants and carrion when it could find any. Some of these piggies grew as tall as 5 feet at the shoulder.

Archaeotherium's fossil is on display at the Badlands Visitor Center, along with a model of what scientists believe it looked like.

We wouldn't want to find one of these rooting around our campsite—not with those chompers—but it is time for lunch, and bacon sandwiches (of prehistoric, bacon-like sandwiches) sound a lot better than the usual peanut butter and jelly.

Here, piggy piggy...

Mako Sica

Is not the sky a father and the earth a mother, and are not all living things with feet or wings or roots their children?

—Nicholas Black Elk, Lakota spiritual leader, 1932

The Lakota called this place mako sica. French trappers knew it as les mauvaises terres á traverser. Both have the same meaning: Bad Lands.

We arrive at dusk, as has become our routine to enter the national parks, and we find a tragically beautiful place. It's eerie and ethereal, mystical and haunted by the sound of wind rustling the grasses and insects buzzing across desolate plains. We enter the park Sept. 16 with the sun setting beyond the colorful, banded wall, glowing in soft purple and orange hues. As the moon rises we drive the Badlands Loop and listen to American Indian songs while an owl glides over the prairie and a massive buck stands near the road. We see their earthly form but prefer to think of them as ancient spirits assuming animal shapes.

After setting up camp, we take Ophie to the amphitheater for the ranger's nightly program. Tonight's toipc: Prairie, which once sprawled across one-third of North America. Only 2 percent remains.

Badlands contains mixed-grass prairie, tall-grass species including big bluestem and prairie cordgrass, and short-grasses such as blue grama and buffalo grass. Today, prairie dogs, muledeer, pronghorn, bison, coyotes, big-horn sheep and black-footed ferrets live and thrive in the park. We watch and listen to the ranger's presentation and appreciate the still, subtle beauty of the grassland, and gaze up at the stars covering the dark, moonless sky.

In the morning, we wake to the Western Meadow Lark's melodic birdsong. It's hot—88 degrees in this land of extremes—and our plans for an intense morning hike quickly fade. Instead, we take a fossil walk and see bygone creatures from millions of years ago like the Leptomeryx, a small, deer-like animal, sheep-like Oreodonts, ancient pigs called Archaeotherium, Mesohippus, a three-toed ancestor of modern horses, and Subhyracodon, a small, plant-eating rhinoceros.

Next stop: Big Foot Pass.

This is the place where Chief Big Foot led about 350 men, women and children down the Badlands Wall on Dec. 24, 1890. Five days later, nearly 200 of them were massacred at Wounded Knee, just to the south. It's an emotional place—much more so, I'm sure, for Lakota descendants.

Next time, we'll visit the Stronghold Table (we're driving the North Unit; it's in the South Unit, through rutted tracks and closed gates) and stand in the place where the Lakota men danced the Ghost Dance for the last time before Wounded Knee. We leave Badlands less than 24 hours after our arrival. But the pictures in our minds of Lakota families pushed across this hard, desolate landscape in the dead of winter—when we don't even want to leave the comfort of the air-conditioned truck to hike a few miles through the canyons—driven to their death haunts us still.

—Jessica

Deadwood

Deadwood, South Dakota: Final resting place of Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, and current nesting place of casinos and kitschy, Old West storefronts and bars.

We stop by Mt. Moriah Cemetery to see Wild Bill and Calamity Jane's gravesites.

Hickok was shot in the back of the head and killed Aug. 2, 1876, while playing poker at Saloon No. 10, and a Dead Man's Hand, black aces and eights, sits beneath his headstone.

Martha Jane Burke, aka Calamity Jane, rests alongside Wild Bill. During her 53 years, she worked on a bull train, performed in a Wild West show and worked as a prostitute. She didn't have much luck at the latter, probably because of her appearance. Most historians agree her claim to be Wild Bill's sweetheart was strictly a figment of her imagination. Regardless, her dying wish—to be buried next to the famed lawman—was granted, cementing her place in local lore and alongside her imagined lover.

In addition to its two most famous spirits, Mt. Moriah is also the final resting place of many colorful characters, like Preacher Smith, a Methodist minister and medical doctor who was well loved by the community and murdered enroute to church, and Dora Dufran, a big-hearted madam with brothels in Lead, Rapid City, Deadwood and Belle Fourche. Children's graves (many died from smallpox) are also found throughout the cemetery, along with a Civil War veterans section.

After nearly getting duped into buying a beer at the so-called Saloon No. 10, we stumble upon Wild Bill Bar, and notice its sign that reads, "Historic Site, Saloon No. 10, where Wild Bill was shot, Aug. 2, 1876. The original bar burned down and was then rebuilt and renamed in honor of its most well-known murder victim.

We toast Wild Bill with a Black and Tan, check out the poker room display with mannequins reenacting Hickok's final hand, eat a burger, and drive like hell through the Black Hills and into Badlands.

The Wild West inspires potential Halloween costumes: Wild Pat Hickok and Calamity Jess.

Four Faces of Freedom

Upon recommendation of several park rangers at Wind Cave, we decide to wait until evening to head up to Mount Rushmore to see the lighting ceremony, the monument's main attraction that inspired a 2,500-seat amphitheater that fills up almost every night between Memorial and Labor days.

We arrive about an hour before dusk not really expecting much other than presidents’ faces in stone and perhaps a trail below them. What we find is much, much more. The monument is beautifully laid out; the entrance has the feeling of a Roman architecture with four flights of stairs leading into huge stone columns that reveal the first glimpse of the Rushmore faces. Upon entering the main grounds there’s a long walkway with every state’s flag and huge stone pillars leading up to the amphitheater site. With the usual gift shop, eatery, and a very well put together museum/visitor center we’re both impressed with Mount Rushmore.

The night is pleasant and warm, so we decide to grab some waffle cones with huge scoops of ice cream mounded on top. Jessica gets strawberry cheesecake and I get my favorite mint chocolate chip. The prices are surprisingly reasonable and we head down and get a seat, front and center. Studying the faces they almost seem fake in their perfection, a true testament to the sculptor Gutzon Borglum. It was his idea and vision to sculpt Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt upon these rocks instead of what was originally supposed to be heroes of the west like Lewis and Clark, Wild Bill or Red Cloud.

As the ceremony approaches we’re joined by a little old lady wearing a stars-and-stripes sweater and sporting a proud grin on her face as she sees the 1,000 plus people roll in. We start chatting and she tells us she’s part of the Mount Rushmore Foundation, which plays and important roll in the upkeep of the park (lawmakers wrote a section in the legislation guaranteeing no fee to enter the park). But thanks to a clever loophole, there's now a $10 fee for parking. Our new friend is full of other pieces of information and historical facts, and we both find her knowledgeable and charming. One interesting story she tells us is that this summer, three Greenpeace activists snuck up to the top and hung a huge banner over the faces with a message for President Obama, "America Honors Leaders not politicians, stop global warming."

Darkness is now upon us. A ranger comes out and plays presidential triva games with the crowd until everyone is finally settled. Every answer is one of the presidents on Rushmore, and within every set of four questions, each of the four presidents gets a nod. This is only the start of what feels like a junior high history lecture. The following video that provides the highlights of each president’s life proves to be very laughable and elementary but nonetheless does show that each man had a great impact on the America in which we live and certainly enjoy. Finally at the end, the spotlights shines and the faces are revealed against the dark starry sky, a beautiful sight that is only dimmed by the urging of the rangers to join along with the recording and sing America the Beautiful.

Upon returning to our Wind Cave campsite, we light a fire and pull out our amateur astronomy book and do some constellation identifying. The sky has so many stars that it almost makes it harder to find things. But we have fun anyway and now feel confident that if we were lost in the woods we could find our way out.

—Patrick

Alvin's Place

Wind Cave National Park is located about a half-hour south of Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. We initially didn't know much about it or even have it on our radar of things to do, but our national parks book convinces us that it's probably worth checking out. We decide to make it our destination after leaving Devils Tower. We make our usual late-night entrance after an all-day-and-night drive, and pull in around 11:30pm. Between some detours that weren't planned—or fun—that we won't mention at this point, the road being different than we expected, and the fear that a deer is going to jump out in front of us at any moment (seriously an issue around these parts!) we drive like grandma on Sunday and finally arrive.

The campground is more like a big picnic park area with bermuda style grasses and huge prairie lands. After getting camp set up and cracking a Rolling Rock (Jessica's cheap beer choice, not so good without lime-aid) we realize that we're standing underneath the most spectacular sky either one of us have ever seen! Life is once again good, and our trip—and 12-hour driving day—have meaning.

Wind Cave is surprisingly the seventh-oldest national park and fifth-longest cave system in the world at the moment. Cave exploration is an ongoing craft, and experts know that there must be more than the 135 miles that are documented. An expo at the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago sparked enough awe and interest that the government commissioned a survey crew to see it first-hand and report back with their data. They unanimously agreed that it was worthy and joined: Yellowstone (first national park); Sequoia (second); Yosemite (third); Kings Canyon (fourth); Mount Rainier (sixth); and Crater Lake (seventh). With the addition of Wind Cave, what was considered worthy of protection changed.

The history of Wind Cave starts with the Native Americans in the area who revered it as sacred and never tried to explore it. The first westerners credited with its discovery were two brothers who had chased a wounded deer down a ravine and stubbled upon the entrance hole. But the main credit for it becoming a protected park goes to a young boy not yet 18 years old.

Alvin McDonald moved to the Black Hills in 1890 when his father was commissioned to run the South Dakota Mining Co. claim in the area. Gold had been discovered and prospectors were flooding in by the hundreds to find their fortune. Alvin being a young boy was less interested in prospecting and more interested in exploring. One day he happened upon the entrance to Wind Cave. What we haven't told you is that the entrance (photo, below) to the cave is only 14 inches across, from the photo and in person we're more that amazed that anyone could have or would have wanted to crawl into this crack in the ground. For the next three years, Alvin spent every waking moment in the cave and chronicled it in a journal that is displayed on the park's website. It was he and his father who took the exibit to the Worlds Fair in Chicago, started the initially tourism in the cave, and provided the first maps of the caves to the government surveyors. Here's an entry from his journal:

Friday Jan 23rd, 1891
We got up late this morning and I started into the cave at 9:15 A.M. with W Stirling of Hay Springs Neb and Frank Stirling of Sault Ste Marie, Mich. as follows. We started for Mound Builder's Rest and got there at 1:00 P.M. After looking around a while we struck a passage leading to the left and went through a narrow passage for 700 feet before finding anything of interest. We then found a flat room with four passages leading from it. We finally chose the passage that lead south and then East. After following this passage for about a quarter of a mile through open rooms we found a place where there had been a heavy fall some ancient period because the rocks are all stuck together with sediment of some kind. I found a geode with white crystals in it at the bottom of the pile. After running out our string we returned to the flat room with the four passages leading from it. I and Walter left Frank with the string so we couldn't get lost and explored the other passages. I found nothing in the west passage and he found nothing in the East passage. Then we both went the N.E. passage and found a room of beautiful crystallized box, lattice and bracket work together with some fine geodes. After backing up in good shape we started for the entrance and arrived at 6:30 P.M. after 9 hr 15 minute trip. Were plenty tired when we got out and.....supper ..... folks went to bed and left me at 9:00 P.M. and I think I will get to bed at 10:00 P.M. Have given up the idea of finding the end of Wind Cave. Good night, Cora.

Understanding that cave exploration in theses days was made possible with candles and a simple ball of string makes Alvin's accomplishments pretty amazing. At one point on the tour our guide tells us a story from Alvin where his string broke and he ran out of candles before he could find the exit. After 60 hours in the dark Alvin found his way out. Pretty amazing. Then the guide turns off the light and we discover what complete darkness is and that it was very amazing someone didn't find his bones years later!

Another great story from our guide, who himself is an avid Wind Cave explorer, came just weeks before we arrived. He and a few other park employees were mapping a new section of the cave when they came upon a room with several passages leading out. His passageway opened up and as he tells it, his excitement grew as he realized there was a large room at the end. In the caving world when you discover a new room you get to name it. He said there was a special feeling being the first person in this room until his head lamp spotted something on the wall that read Alvin McDonald July 4, 1893, with a smile he knew he was in Alvin's Place.

—Patrick Hardcastle

A Pleasant Detour

The benefit of studying the atlas several times in the morning before leaving is that you'll find hidden gems that detour off of the planned route and in many cases get a "I didn't even realize we were that close," comment. While headed for the Black Hills, I notice Devils Tower National Monument is just a short loop north before we hit South Dakota and our turn south. The famed rock of so many sci-fi geeks and UFO searchers is a place that I've always longed to see (hopefully that gives you a little insight in who I am.) On the drive in I almost clean out a suicidal turkey, which may have been good for our food budget and Ophie's birding instincts, but bad because we don't have a lot of extra room for a 40-pound bird.

Devils Tower is an impressive sight on the horizon, this massive rock formation rising out of the tame rolling hills of eastern Wyoming. Pulling into the parking lot, we see the dreaded no dog sign which, for the most part, we pretend means bring your dog, let her off the leash, and please let her pooh somewhere in the woods, out of sight!! But there's a large group of Native Americans who use these lands as a sort of spiritual Mecca, so we decide it best to keep Ophie on the leash and go up to the rock one at a time.

The Kiowa, the local native american tribe, have a legend that goes something like this: "Eight children were there at play, seven sisters and their brother. Suddenly the boy was struck dumb; he trembled and began to run upon his hands and feet. His fingers became claws, and his body was covered with fur. Directly there was a bear where the boy had been. The sisters were terrified; they ran, and the bear after them. They came to the stump of a great tree and the tree spoke to them. It bade them to climb upon it, and as they did so it began to rise into the air. The bear came to kill them, but they were just beyond its reach. It reared against the tree and scored the bark all around with its claws. The seven sisters were borne into the sky, and they became the the stars of the Big Dipper."

Native American legends are better than strict science and modern religions!!!

On the way out we see a little spot called Devils Tower View. It's a bbq/gift shop/taxidermy spot and in most normal cases we wouldn't stop but they have Buffalo Burgers posted on the sign outside and we've been talking about trying one for the last several hundred miles. The shop is run by a very friendly older couple who's hospitality and food is matched only by the views of Devils Tower behind the shop. We're surprised to find out that they have wireless internet and it's a good chance to catch up on a few things before hitting national park land that has NO internet connections anywhere! We each grab a burger and a Devils Tower lager, grab a sticker and some huckleberry honey, say our farewells, snap a quick photo and we're off!

A Pleasant Detour.

Extra-Super 8

Super 8 in Powell, Wyoming. A shower and a bed never felt so good. It's got everything we need: Wi-Fi, a TV, a hot tub, laundry and Pizza Hut next door. We overindulge in all of the above. When we leave Super 8, heading to South Dakota, all three of us smell fresh, like lavender and vanilla. After two nights sleeping in a motel room we are ready to sleep outdoors and hear nature's noises instead of indoor air conditioning.

When we finally arrive in Wind Cave after a 12-hour drive from Powell, a wildlife symphony of elk, owls, coyotes and crickets welcomes us back to their world.

Climbing Cliffs and Jumping Off

Grand Teton, Day Two.

It's Sept. 12, but we're losing track of dates and days of the week, and beginning to measure time by places and activities. We won't remember today as Sept. 12, but rather as the day we hiked up into the Tetons and cliff jump into crystal-blue Jenny Lake.

We take the Cascade Canyon Trail, which loops around Jenny Lake before climbing about 5 miles to Hidden Falls, and then another steep mile past the falls to Inspiration Point, elevation 7,200 feet. We're speedy on the uphill trip (Patrick race-hikes), scaling rocks to pass foreign tourists and small children with walking sticks, eliciting comments from an older Southern couple sitting on a log: "You're fast now, but we'll see what you look like on the downhill."

What we look like on the downhill: Stripped down to our skivvies and soaking wet. But first we find Inspiration: A bottle of beer, alpine smells and turquoise waters hundreds of feet below.

On the hike up to Inspiration Point, we realize what we've been missing: Cliff jumping. And then we see her: a massive boulder, as close to a foothill as we've seen in the Tetons, rising about 15 feet above Jenny Lake. It's a hot, dry day and the lake calls to us. Once we see the rock, we know where we'll be stopping on the hike back down to our campsite.

We both jump and dive off the rock into Jenny Lake and the glacier-fed water instantly soothes our hot skin and refreshes us. Fellow hikers cheer and laugh at the crazy kids swimming in their underwear in the icy lake.

While we're sunning on top of the rock, we see a monstrous rainbow trout swimming in the lake, lazily hunting for flies on top of the water, not the least bit worried about landing on someone's dinner plate (yes, we do wish we'd brought a fishing pole).

It's the perfect day and the perfect place, from the cozy, RV-free campsite at Jenny Lake to the 12-mile roundtrip hike, to swimming in clear, cold waters—and, at least for me, it's made even more perfect by the promise of a bed and a shower, which will be our first in a week, at the end of the day. We plan to stay in Jackson, and I've got visions of plush pillows, claw-foot tubs and clean hair dancing in my head. We'll have a night out on the town, dine and drink at a cowboy bar, and I'll wear makeup for the first time in a month and my sole dress that I brought to last four months on the road. It's past Labor Day so we figure tourist season ha ended, so we don't make hotel reservations.

Big mistake.

There is no vacancy is Jackson, and I'm melting down. My scalp itches and my hair is matted and forming dreads. Patrick stinks, the dog stinks, I stink and, from the three of us sitting and sweating in it all day, the truck especially stinks.

Patrick tries to make me feel better by blaming our poor planning on Harrison Ford, who owns a ranch in Jackson.

"Damn Harrison. We'd be able to find a room if didn't rent out the entire town to accommodate his out-of-town guests."

This doesn't stop my tears. Jackson's south of where we're headed (Wind Cave), so we decide to drive north east, and we'll try to find a available room in some Wyoming city. We drive back through Grand Teton and Yellowstone, passing herds of buffalo and the sun setting over Yellowstone Lake.

Simple Life

Daily activities take longer outdoors. Making coffee entails pulling the camping stove out of the truck, filling the percolator with water, lighting the stove (sometimes refilling the propane), waiting for the water to boil, pressing the coffee.

Usually by 10am we've cooked breakfast, washed ourselves and our dishes, rolled the sleeping mats, stuffed the sleeping bags, taken down the tent, packed the truck and are on the road, heading to the next camp site or national park or state.

After the sun sets, we reverse this routine. Setting up camp takes nearly no time at all, but preparing dinner takes hours sometimes, chopping, boiling, dressing, saucing, cooking.

I like this.

It's methodical and ritual, and allows me time to reflect on the activity and give thanks for the place I'm in and at, the food I'm preparing and the people for whom I'm preparing it. Food tastes better outdoors, sights look more vivid, scents smell more distinctly and touch feels more sensitive. We live with a heightened sense of alertness and remain conscious in the moment. I don't want to lose this when I'm back in the real world.

—Jessica

Tetons of Fun

The youngest of the Rocky Mountains, the Tetons are perhaps the most dramatic, seemingly rising from flatland (it's relative in the Rockies), jagged, glacier-capped and looking like something from a movie set. And perhaps they are—Harrison Ford has a ranch here, which may explain why we can't get a room in Jackson Hole on a given Saturday night, but more about that later.

The wildlife, plantlife and colors in Yellowstone are vivid and awe-inspiring, unlike anything we have ever experienced. But Grand Teton is a welcome change of pace: quieter, smaller, warmer, a place where we feel more ownership. To quote our campsite neighbors, Susan and George, at Jenny Lake, "You can hold Grand Tetons in your hand." This is after they told us to live simply and care deeply (Susan) and gave us permission to have kids because our dog was very well-behaved (Susan), and threatened to bear-mace our dog, (George) who followed them into their tent at 7pm and asked permission to fart (George) before the happy couple remembered what oysters did to George. And then we didn't hear from them for the rest of the night.

The bike path in Grand Teton National Park winds 8 miles through the park with the Tetons towering behind the paved, mulit-use path.

We ride 7.6 miles into Moose, WY, which we decide to move to based on the name alone (we do see a mama moose and her baby on the ride into town, which must be a good omen, or, at least, a good large mammal). After the ride to Moose, we stop at Dornans for a beer—Moose Drool. It tastes rich and refreshing after our ride, and it's amplified by the mountains behind the patio.

Wine sounds good after three weeks of beer (we should have brought a case of California wine. Feel free to donate to the cause.), and the pizza shop has a liquor store next door. But, alas, West Coast wine costs a lot more when one's in Middle America, so we buy a six pack of local, organic beer, which is more in our price-range. It also takes more room in our camel packs.

Patrick's got the camera at this point. One thing I've learned on this trip: Things that go wrong are usually my fault. The other things that go wrong are because "we" did something wrong, as in: "We ran out of gas" between Hood River and Spokane (translation: Patrick didn't stop to fill up the tank and then we ran out of gas, and waited an hour for AAA to bring us 5 gallons, which barely drives us to the next town with a gas station). And, now, "we" forget the camera at the liquor store. This means Patrick took it out of his pack, set it on the counter and didn't stick it back in after putting three bottles inside his camel pack.

The way he, err, we tell the rest of the story: Patrick rides up the killer hill out of Moose, a winding, steep trail that takes all of our willpower—and lung power—to climb. He's stronger and faster, and beats me to the top. Turning around to snap a picture "of Jess and her red face, riding up the hill," he realizes the camera is no longer in his pack or pocket. Thus, "we" forgot the camera.

I can't complain. He rides back down—and up—the hill to get the camera, and then catches up to me about a half-mile from Jenny Lake. He climbs the incline twice, but even though my legs don't burn like his do, I think the beer tastes just as good back at camp.

—Jessica

Geyser Row

Yellowstone houses some 10,000 thermal features, and more than 500 of these are geysers. Here are some of our favorites. Here's Opal Pool:

And Grand Prismatic Springs, the largest hot springs in the U.S. and the third largest in the world. The colors are the result of the pigmented bacteria in the microbial mats that grow around the edges of mineral-rich water:

Excelsior Geyser, the tallest active geyser in the world, active for 10 years ending in 1888, with one major eruption in 1985:

Great Fountain Geyser, our favorite, which we happened upon its eruption by pure luck:

And, of course, Old Faithful:

Yellowstone's True Colors

And we're back!! Sorry to those family and friends who thought we may have been swallowed up by the road, lets get on with it...

In 1872 Yellowstone became the U.S.'s first national park. As we study the park map over our morning coffee we discover that not only does Yellowstone contain the greatest variety of natural treasures in the nation, It is very bike friendly and has miles of multi-use trails prohibited to cars. YES!!! At this point we're ready for a brake from our truck/home, which has taken on a funky smell that may be coming from us...Jessica thinks it's just me and the dog, the dog thinks it's absolutely heaven, and I know I'm probably guilty as charged but I somehow justify it as my "explorer scent." It's a short 12 mile drive over to Nez Perce Creek where the parks longest multi-use trail picks up so we break down camp quickly and eagerly get going.

Instantly Yellowstone embraces us with it's beauty and we feel like we've stumbled into heaven. We pull our bikes down from the top racks and do our best to clean the 6 states worth of bugs off of them, get our camelbacks loaded up, situate the truck for Ophie to hang tight for the day, and we start pedaling. Within a couple minutes we spot our first buffalo, it's quite breath taking that you can be so close to such a strong powerful beast and bask in its presence. The true symbol of the Great American West, proud and sturdy, useful and necessary...why we traded this native grazing animal for the the cow?? I think it was the mentality of the day: eradicate the Native Americans and their culture for a new society to take root. Throughout our travels I realize there is a thin line between being proud of American History and ashamed of American History. Across the same path that we're traveling today Chief Joseph led his people on the infamous Trail of Tears, reminders are scattered about...

The trail we pick up takes us away from the Nez Perce Creek and picks up the Firehole River, which meanders through the golden meadows of Yellowstone, rolling past the fire-scared trees of the '88 fire that redefined the landscape drastically. The forest has regenerated itself, and the park seems to not have missed a beat. None of the big landmarks were harmed and the herds of animals still remain intact. Throughout travels in all the national parks, we are constantly reminded that fire is a friend, not foe, and is vital to a healthy park system.

The 30-plus mile loop highlights the parks thermo-geologic pools and perhaps more than 100 of varying shapes, sizes, colors, temperatures and smells that line the Firefox River. Many of them runoff into the river that is teeming with life as is evident by the success of the the fly fishermen that seem to be everywhere in the park. Jessica uses the binoculars to study the landscape but I think she is remembering the movie A River Runs Through It (that follows the story of Norman Mclean) and is searching for his brother who was played by Brad Pitt!

As we continue down the the trail, a different side of Yellowstone emerges and suddenly we're riding in a peloton of insects. Thousands of grasshoppers dance off the fronts of our tires and, in many cases, jump right on us and hitch a ride for a while. It's evident from Jessica's shrills that several have tried to hitch a ride on her face. Also accompanying them are huge, bright fire red and orange dragonflies. There must be dozens of other varieties of flies but we weren't able to pick the brain of any fly fishermen to see what was biting on the river. Thankfully no mosquitos along the trail—and throughout the trip for that matter.

Off of the multi-use trail, we decide to stash our bikes in the trees and take a 4-mile hike out to Hidden Falls. It's an easy trail that really highlights the new growth over taking the fire-burnt areas. The falls are impressive considering that it's just a trickling stream above and below. The marsh area around the base of the falls is cool and refreshing, and we both dunk our heads in the stream before turning around and hiking out. While hiking out we realize that most of the people on the trail looked dressed more for the mall or disco than for walking in the park. Their discomfort and bickering gives us some good laughs, and before we knew it we are back on our bikes. Within minutes Yellowstone once again gives us a little thrill. We spot a coyote about 100 feet up on the trail and we ride quickly to follow its tracks as it ducks into a small meadow next to the trail. We pull up in time to see it stalking some small critter. Suddenly it pounces and lunch is served! We watch it finish the snack and then slowly move on balancing on a fallen tree and then ducking away into the bush. A very cool moment!

At this point we're just on the back side of the Grand Prismatic Spring. It's a huge, psychedelic-inspired thermal pool with multi-colored steam pouring out looking like flares burning at a South American soccer match. It's a little journey up and around back to the main entrance on the main highway which parallels the Firehole River again. Before the entrance, Jessica spots our first bald eagle (looking more like a teradactile) and I spot an Osprey hitting the water in front of a fly fisherman and some lucky tourists who just pilled out of a mini-van.

The Grand Prismatic Spring is on a one-half mile boardwalk along with the Excelsior Geyser Crater, which looks like a huge, tropical-water hot tub, only it heats at 160 degrees. This is definitely one of the most popular attractions in the park and has hundreds of people gawking at its unique beauty. It's fun to look at all of the license plates, and realize that as we head further east we are one of the few "dreaded Californians" out this far, which only reinforces that our decision that to embark on this epic journey was the right decision at this point in our lives.

Our amazing journey now turns to riding back to the Nez Perce Creek picnic area entirely along the highway, which we find is pleasant and, in our estimation, the only way to travel through the park. Beautiful meadows, small lakes, and more geysers line the miles and I'm very impressed with Jessica's poise the entire way, not only pedaling along single-track in the park but also dealing with 50-plus miles an hour traffic (the cars were probably not looking at the road) whizzing past us! For those of you who don't know: Jessica fell off a 60-foot cliff in Aptos' Nisene Marks earlier this year but has been fearlessly charging ever since.

Just about a mile before the end of our journey, we see Firehole Lake Drive, a small 2- or 3-mile loop road with a few of the park's hidden geysers along it. The afternoon has been so pleasant that we happily turn up the road to see what most pass without a second glance. There are several small geysers not unlike anything we haven't seen durning the day and then in true Yellowstone fashion we happen upon perhaps the best hidden gem of the day. The Great Fountain Geyser is about to blow and usually only does once or twice a year—if lucky. The hardcore photo geyser community sits loaded and ready for the show, and we stand closely by soaking up information, and realizing just how lucky we were to turn up this road. The geyser slowly starts bubbling and shooting 10 minutes before the climax of 80-100 feet spurts of steaming hot water that ahhh the simple on-lookers and satisfy those who have awaited the next eruption since last May. We leave with many great photos and an experience that we know the masses that visit Yellowstone every year seldom see.

Finally back to the car, hours longer that expected but more impressed and happier than we may have been anywhere along the trip we grab our PB&J sandwiches and Glacier beer (cheap stuff for sure!!) and bask in our glorious adventure. Never has a cheap meal tasted so much like that of a king's, and never have we needed to disobey the rules of not swimming in the creek with our dog applied more! I jump in first with an Iowa family looking on in disgust and attentive curiosity. With Ophie and I playing fetch up and down the creek, they look on like we're one of the main attractions in the park. Jessica at first is reluctant but slowly comes around until she finally sits in the creek and, with some urging, leans back and baptises herself in the waters. Her look upon re-emerging tells the story of the whole day... : )

—Patrick