Day 7 - Aftermath

It was rough getting moving today.

There are two girls in
 there somewhere

The past few days of activity were catching up with us.   I'm going to blame the altitude for my sluggishness.  Another group was slated to use the lodge and cabins so we had to be packed up and out by 10am.  After some horseplay, there was more cleanup to do in the lodge and kitchen before we could leave (I ended up mopping the whole floor - not a good job for a reforming perfectionist.  It took me well over an hour to complete).  By the time we were finished, we had left the lodge better than we found it.  After packing up the car, we headed off to explore the Snowy Mountains some more.

Note the shiny floor! 

 We hiked a few trails, one of which took us around the remains of an old mining camp which consisted of a single cabin and the remains of the mine entrance and equipment.  The mine ended up being in a poor location and didn't produce much but it was cool to imagine working there over a hundred years ago.





Another trail had a lookout stand which I found Aidan barely hanging on to.  He did survive the fall, the snow cushioned the blow :)

no children were harmed
in the making of this picture.

There was an informative sign talking about the vegetation at 10k feet.  It's not an easy life.  Turns out much of the moss and plants are over 100 years old and have incredibly deep tap roots and don't start blooming until 20 years into their growth cycle.

a survivor

We headed back to Laramie to try and catch Mark before he departed for his residency in Lander, WY about 6 hours away from Laramie.  He was just able to squeeze in the wedding between his medical school classes and residency work!  Side note:  Got a txt from Mark saying he had a good first day of residency despite it being 100deg F in Lander.  He participated in a c-section.  Everyone has their own idea of fun I guess :)

By now, too much of the day was gone to get on the road to our next stop so we stayed at a hotel in Laramie graciously provided to us by my parents.  The hotel was a welcomed break.  There we recovered, resupplied, swam, showered, ate chinese and went to bed early - well some of us did.  We decided our next stop would be yellowstone with a drive-by viewing of the Tetons.  We were originally planning to camp at the Tetons but spending more time in Yellowstone was more attractive to us.  We had postponed reserving a campsite at Yellowstone because we didn't know exactly when we would be there.  In hindsight that wasn't such a good idea.  Initial attempts to find a campsite seemed to indicate that all the spots were taken.  We started to re-think our destination but after several hours of effort, Katrina was able to secure a campsite for two days in Grant Village at Yellowstone.  Tomorrow we are off to camp on a volcano.  whoohoo.