AFTER THOUGHTS

September 9, 1999

This is our last weekend in the park. It's a time to be pensive. As a neighbor and I went on our last hike, I thought how I've acclimated to living at 8,000 feet and about how I've enjoyed the park.

The college kids that worked in the restaurants have been gone almost three weeks. Every morning the thermometer shows freezing temperatures and there's frost on the windshields. I've noticed colored snow marker poles have been installed along the roads and near telephone equipment boxes. We've gotten to know everyone in Grant Village: the post office lady, the store clerks, and the restaurant people. We even have a table at the Lake House that we call "OUR TABLE". While I was on the hike, Gina went to the Lake House for breakfast. When the manager saw her coming, he prepared "our table" with special place settings. People thought she must be someone very important.

Yellowstone has been an experience. It's more than a park, it's two national parks, it's seven national forests, it's three wildlife refuges, and it's five gateway towns. The greater Yellowstone ecosystem contains the largest unfenced area and another area that is the largest number of acres without roads. The forested mountains surrounding the park are the wildest areas in the lower forty-eight states. Yellowstone conjures up visions of thermal basins with large geysers, the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, waterfalls, the lake, snow capped mountains, buffaloes, grizzlies, wolves, and elk. And, to us it is work in the campground office.

People tell us that when the park opens, (I should say parts of it opens) for winter, it's a completely different park. We plan to come back to see someday, but our mind is on the long trip home: Moab, Albuquerque, Comanche, and Corpus Christi.