R writes... Brrrr. These mountain nights are COLD. We go to bed a little too hot after a sunny day with temperatures in the low eighties, but overnight it drops into the forties and so do we! Tom gets bundled up when he goes to bed but Philippa and I feel in need of an extra blanket at times, and we have not quite got the right setting for the heater, so we woke this morning feeling a little cool, while T slept on under his layers. So, this called for porridge, with maple syrup rather than golden, in a nod to our geography.
There are endless trails to choose from but after breakfast we headed north to Swan Lake in the hope of seeing, er swans, but also bears and moose and elk and all the other critters. The walk began by the lake and then headed up into meadows sprinkled with big yellow daisies and blue flowers which Philippa says are lupins. I'll take her word for it. For much of the time we were the only people on the trail and everyone has made such a fuss about the number of Grizzlies around that we were scanning very carefully. We met a family coming the other way who said they had seen bears on the other side of the lake, but when we got there, the brown things we could see moving around in the distance turned out to be, ahem, Canada Geese. A little further on there was a placid Elk grazing by the trail who couldn't care less that we were gawping at him.
Swan Lake is rather lovely. Serene and glassy, half covered with lilly pads, stretching off to green meadows and snowy foothills off in the distance. Crossing the spit to Colter Bay we saw white pelicans bobbing about - imagine that! I hadn't thought we would see them here. In a fit of nerdy over-preparedness (and remembering a close shave in Yosemite last year where we lost the path and were heading into the wilderness) I brought along a little GPS unit I bought years ago for trekking, and Tom navigated us back. "Zero point nine five to go now!". We had a strange lunch in the Colter Bay cafe and delighted once again in the holiday-job service. Young, friendly staff all doing tourist jobs for the summer with attention spans that don't quite, ooh look there's a geyser. And talking of geysers, we finally crossed the border into Yellowstone and went straight to Old Faithful. We waited for it to geyse (yes I know, but it sounds like it should be a word) on the benches arranged around it, watching it bubble up a couple of times before it finally blew. I thought it would fire steam violently from the hole and hadn't expected such gentle white froth. Back to the campsite. Bed, heater up a bit. Night all.
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