We woke up Saturday morning in PAIN. George’s calves and my
quads, right hip and toe ends were all dead. My poor toes got jammed into my
boot ends as we descended from Avalanche Peak and they are going to need more
than a night to recover. We had slept well, but we were exhausted. So, as we
began to break camp and repack the car, the bad mojo set in.
I dropped one of the Joey’s safety chains onto his baby toe.
He was wearing flipflops. Then, George was cranking the trailer jack up and I
leaned in too close and he pounded me in the face with his fist. And if that
was not enough, we went to go grab showers and check out, as we were about to
drive away, George went to close the SUV hatch and slammed the corner of it
into his scalp. He cried out and I flew around to the back of the car. His eyes
were screwed shut and he had his palm pressed against his head. I guessed
immediately what had happened because he has slammed the hatch on my head
before and beaned me, knocking me to the ground. When he was finally able to
talk, I asked to see the spot. When he took his hand away, there was an inch
long PUNCTURE in his scalp that burped a mass of blood into his hair. Holy
crap!
I am thankful that we spent so much time in the park last
summer because I knew right where all of the medical clinics are. I grabbed
George’s keys and we zipped off to the nearest clinic, 7 miles away from
Fishing Bridge in the Lake Hotel area. Upon arriving, the registration nurse
gave George some gauze to hold against the wound and instructed he should keep
the pressure on it. It was TWO HOURS before we were even registered. Yesterday
was the busiest day they have had all year. There were three emergencies ahead
of us (one medical, one orthopedic and one surgical) all of which required
transport out of the park to better equipped facilities. Typically, bear
maulings, thermal feature burns, bison gorings and the like are things that
require transport. I hope we never find ourselves in any of those situations!
So, we finally got into a room, saw the doctor and George was pronounced fine.
The wound had healed itself shut so they opted not to give him a staple or
stitches. I had to watch him for nausea and drowsiness. He did not have a
concussion either. Good grief. He is feeling much better today and is
currently singing along to “Aquarius/ Let the Sun Shine” by The 5th
Dimension very loudly to make it hard for me to write. Yeah, he is fine.
We were supposed to go for a short hike across a rolling
meadow back to a virtual geocache, take our picture to prove we were there and
then get in the car and drive to Bozeman, Montana and then on to Butte, Montana
to sleep. We did not leave the clinic until after 1 PM, so we changed plans and
skipped the hike. And then got stuck behind more cars looking at bison, bison walking in the road and cars stopped to look at bears. Argh! You really cannot get anywhere in Yellowstone quickly. All that means is that George will have to bring me back to
Yellowstone to find that cache! A guaranteed return trip is fine by me.
As we were approaching the Mammoth (north west) exit of the
park, we passed a black bear foraging on a hillside and five miles away, a
grizzly foraging in a valley. Quite a few people were way to close and a Park Ranger showed up pretty quickly and chased them back to a safe distance. I was glad for the spotting scope once again, as
I could see his clumps of fur and open, panting mouth. Love it!
We had dinner last night in Bozeman, Montana at a
restaurant/ bar called Montana Ale Works. I ate there 15 years ago when
traveling through Montana with my family. While we sat and ate our dinners,
four young men rode down main street on their four wheelers. Two of them did
wheelies and man, did I think that was cool. I was thrilled to be able to come
back tonight. Dinner was delish, if you noticed from my appreciative tweets. We
sat outside, eating at the patio bar. Gorgeous weather, amazing dinner and no
necessary helicopter medical transport needed rounded out to a decent day.
No comments:
Post a Comment