Yellowstone Adventure - Day 85

   Got up early to get a good breakfast as I would need the energy for today's hike. Our hike today is in the Pelican Valley and toward Turbid Lake. This hike should be no more than eight and a half miles round trip.
  Breakfast was great and we loaded up Jack's car with our stuff and headed out around eight thirty. Jack invited a Taiwanese girl named Sharon to hike with us. So the group was Jack, George, Sharon and myself. Sharon has worked at Yellowstone for four years now and this year her work visa expires and she will be heading home and to school. She is around four foot eight inches tall and can run rings around all of us on this hike. She worked up in Alaska at a fish processing plant before coming here. She said the job was three weeks straight of ten hours a day. She said her job was to gut fish all day. After she told me what she did I can tell you she is one tough girl. She travels around the world working temporary jobs and making enough money to be able to go home and go to school.
  Jack asked me to drive his car today as he wanted to just enjoy the view. I drove to fishing bridge with a stop at the general store there. The store is a sister store of ours and I was surprised it was bigger than ours and held some items we did not carry. But as far as sales go our store beats theirs hands down. After visiting the store we headed to the trail and parked. Once I exited the car I was disappointed to see two horse trailers parked on the other side. This did not bode well for seeing animals on this hike as the horses and riders will scare off animals on the trail. Also it took only a few steps on the trail before I figured we would be dodging horse poop all day.
  The trail led out of the parking area and into a nice valley before entering into some very quiet woods. Jack would yell out "Hello bears" every so often to warn them of our coming. I like woods hiking as it is really peaceful in there and the wind through the tops of the trees is very peaceful. After exiting the woods we entered Pelican Valley with the mountains behind. One of the peaks was called avalanche peak and George said that was a good hike and being ten thousand feet up the views were fantastic. There was another peak that was named sleeping giant and it really looked like a guys head laying on their back. I will upload a picture of it to Facebook later. 
   Walking through the valley was nice but still no animals are seen close or in the distance. After about a mile clouds started to congregate overhead and it was not long before we heard thunder. We all stopped and rested while everyone got out a coat or a slicker from their pack. Soon after we started out again the rain started. So I guess I can check hiking in the rain and thunder off my bucket list. The rain was cold but not a big down pour and we plodded on. We reached a sign on the trail indicating that Turbid Lake was to the right and to the left was a trail to Pelican peak. We met a ranger on the trail who slept on top of the peak in a ranger cabin and said it was nice in the cabin as the wind was really blowing last night. He also said he saw no animals anywhere in the valley and we did not like to hear that. Well we turned right and headed for the lake. The rain started to get heavier so we headed for a small group of trees to wait the rain out. The thing about mountain rains is that they tend to blow over fast. After a few minutes the rain lessened and we continued the hike to the lake. After another mile we entered another forest and the rain was blocked pretty well by the canopy.  A short walk through the forest brought us to the lake. The rain had stopped then and so we climbed up a hill that gave us a great view of the lake and got seats for lunch. With the weather being slightly overcast the lake had a dark look. The lake was being fed but some geyser areas and Jack said the water was not really fit to drink for humans but it seems fish are in the water and animals come down to drink from it. George and I had peanut butter and jelly while Sharon and Jack had some lunch meat. The view was great and the conversation was excellent. Got to know a lot more about George and we had some great Bible discussions.  His basic question seemed to be how do you know you are saved. A good question and one that comes up quite a bit. Some people feel that if they don't get the electric rush of the Holy Spirit when the confess and are baptized that they don't feel they have been saved. I told him that faith in Jesus words is what is needed and to start living differently than before is a good first step.
   After lunch the sun started to show and the day turned really nice for the walk back out of the valley. We stopped several times on the trip back as Jack was getting winded pretty easily. When you are seventy and hiking your allowed as many rests as you want.  When we reached the Pelican Valley junction we stopped for about a half an hour and just sat on the grass in the valley. We just stared at the view and conversed amongst ourselves. It was truly a great hike and with the sun coming out the day was great. George commented that the days are getting colder early and he feels that winter will be coming early. He also noticed several birds have already disappeared. He also would not bet against a hard winter at Yellowstone. His contract ends in October and he hopes the snows won't delay him getting back home to Naperville Illinois.
  After a few more breaks we hiked out and loaded our packs into Jack's car. I drove back to the dorm and I could tell it was a good hike as George and Jack both slept on the way back.  We reached the dorm around six and in time for dinner.
  Well that is about all for today and I really enjoyed the hike and the conversation today and maybe I will get to hike with them again before I leave. I hope you all take care and stay well.