This morning, we decided to stay at the campground another night so we can take a much needed reset day. We had a slow morning and made a delicious breakfast of bacon and eggs. I actually sat outside at the picnic table for a minute with my coffee in the morning, taking in the fresh mountain air. We slowly got ourselves together and headed into Mammoth Springs to get stamps from the post office there. There were so many elk hanging out in town!
We went back into Gardiner, and found the Wash Tub. We all had showers, and my skin drank up lotion after the many days of heat and sunscreen. Andy took the kids to get Subway while the clothes were drying, and I started sorting through the many photos I had already taken on the trip. Before I knew it, it was folding time and Andy and I were going to grab some lunch for ourselves. We found a place that served elk & bison burger and as soon as we pulled up, it started to rain and Andy remembered that we had left the vent over our bed in the camper open!
We had to rush back to camp, but we were ahead of the rain and were able to avert disaster. We turned around, went back into Gardiner again and had our lunch. I did some computer work there, but still wanted to use WiFi a bit longer, so they went through the souvenir shops while I sat at one of the coffee shops and got a few blogs posted. I caught up with the family, popped into a couple shops myself and we retired back to camp.
We debated taking a dip in the Boiling River, but the threat of amoebic menengitis after our first shower in days had me wimping out. We do live near Flint, and Legionnaire’s isn’t on my bucket list! We did stop for a photo at the 45th parallel (half way between the equator and north pole), so there’s that!
We hit the general store in Mammoth, and there was a herd of elk hanging out! Back at camp, the kids rode their bikes around and went up to the amphitheater for the nightly ranger program with their friends at the campground, and we made hot ham & cheese sandwiches over a campfire in the sandwich iron. We prepared the camper to get up and head out early in the morning to see Old Faithful and head south out of the park towards the Grand Tetons where our next adventure awaits.