I’ve been thinking about City Slickers (the movie) a lot lately. I mean the witty lines are one thing but I am not sure if its because I was just in Montana and in the land of the cowboys, I’m on Vacation! (like Billy exclaims), or the looming birthday that’s on horizon. Am I due for a mid-life crisis? Oh crap, am I in one?

Okay it maybe have something to do with lately I have been super busy and pushing the bounds on taking that important bathroom break and by the time I go I keep thinking I’m bursting (there’s going to be bursting?), hoping I don’t pee my pants.

My friend, Tim, booked himself on this trip and convinced me I should go as well. Well I must admit it didn’t take much to twist the arm, I was eyeing up the experiences the team had on this the previous year and had a case of FOMO going on, so yes sign me up.

I have visited Yellowstone as a child, I don’t recall too much of it as it was one of the stops on a roadtrip across country, but that was in the summer. I did need to go visit it again, but what a fun idea to go visit in the winter and see how the park takes on a different life.

There always seems to be a bout of craziness that exists at work when you are trying to get everything wrapped up in order to head out so I hadn’t put in a lot of thought about the trip until the night before but I was ready.

Landing in Bozeman I was greeted by mild temps and something amazing, the sun! It had been the dreariest (think grey cloud cover) January in over 50 years back in MN and I don’t think I had seen the sun in over 2 weeks. Since I got in early, I decided to take advantage and checked in and took some naps. I felt just like a cat, napping in the sun, soaking up that vitamin D.

West Yellowstone

The next day we took a leisurely drive down to West Yellowstone to settle in for adventuring in the park, stopping briefly to take some photos of some big horned sheep we saw along the hills. We got in a little early so we explored the town, most stores and shops were limited in their hours so not much was open but we did find a nice little bar to enjoy a beer or two before dinner.

 

After we grabbed dinner we noticed that our hotel had a smore’s kit available and there was a fire outside up front. We settled in for a bit and enjoyed debating how best to roast a marshmallow. We were soon joined by a few gentleman.

They were so eloquent in their speech, and had European accents, one mentioned he went to Oxford for school, and due to his vivid description I figured something to do with literature. Oh boy was I wrong. Ha. It turned out they were neuroscientists in the area for a conference. They joked they liked conferences here, they eat a pound of bacon for breakfast, go to a few lectures and have the day off to ski or explore to repeat the next day.

We inquired a bit about their studies and what is new in the industry. They were comical debating with each other so I asked a seemingly innocent question. What were their thoughts on nature vs nurture. Oh boy what came out of this was so amusing to watch. Talking about how the brain is wired and all, how sex comes into play with all of it. One guy argued with the other, so you can manipulate and shock a little rat brain but that isn’t the same as a human brain, show me the proof! There was discussion that one of the studies had shown if you trigger the part of the brain a mouse was shown to become very amorous with the other mouse but if you overstimulate and trigger that part of the brain the mouse becomes very aggressive and violent.

Playing back the exchange with these gentleman isn’t as vivid as my memory was right afterwards but it was comical and we had fun.

Yellowstone National Park

The next morning we went into the park before the sun rose. Now the park is open but to visit in the winter you can only go on guided tours, either with snowmobiles or snowcoaches (buses or larger vehicles with monstertruck style tires).

Yellowstone is magical but it highlights how we need to be good stewards to the environment and not mess with the ecosystem. Wolves were eliminated from the park at some point and the elk herds grew excessively, killing off certain plantlife and driving out other animals. In January it was the 25th anniversary of the reintroduction of the wolves to the park and the ecosystem is getting itself back in balance. Of course there are some hunters who would prefer they would not be there as it is more difficult to find the elk now, but hey if you are going to hunt, then you should have to hunt, not shoot fish in a barrel.

The day started off a little gloomy, but eventually the skies cleared a bit, due to impending weather predictions for the next day we altered our route a bit for some activities we were going to do the next day. There was risk that if we stuck to the original plan we wouldn’t have been able to make to some of the locations the next day so we shifted around.

The park is just magical under the blankets of snow, and bonus the park is less crowded, letting us have more opportunities to see the animals do their thing. Timmy and I had some fun making snow angels. This wasn’t as easy as I remembered as a child, it may have had to do with a bit of ice crust on the snow we fell into. Ha!

The next day we explored more of the common locations you think of when you think Yellowstone but in the afternoon the snow had started to fall and of course that brought out the little kid in all of us, and it lent itself to the shot most of us wanted to get. Bison covered in snow. This was the last thing we saw before we ended our 2 days in the park and it was perfect.  Now I’m still editing away on these and I’ll do more of a feature of the final edits in the future.

All I have to say is if you find yourself some time, go ahead and visit some of the national parks in winter.  They are wonderful.