Yellowstone
BISON KNOW THEY’RE BAD

Repairs completed, we happily declared ourselves road ready and got back to it. Along the way Carson and I were listening to a report on the radio about amazon.com. It seems that rather than air condition their warehouses they find it more cost effective to have ambulances waiting outside to remove their employees who collapse from heat exhaustion. My first thought was: Man…I know first hand how unbearable it is in Indonesia. But it turns out that this wasn’t happening in Indonesia, or Myanmar, or Cambodia, or some other place that’s as hot as a bullet with no history of labor rights. It was in Pennsylvania…in the good ole US of A. Amazons response: “Um…yeah…we’re…uh…taking care of that…um…situation.” “Air conditioning has recently been installed”, the reporter confirmed. “But that’s probably because the new robots that are replacing the humans in the warehouses can’t operate in such heat.”

SUNRISE IN HAYDEN VALLEY

So I asked Carson: “As long as Amazon gets our stuff to us cheaply and quickly enough, do you think anyone REALLY cares?” And he, at the ripe old age of twelve thought for a second and shook his head. We can’t even fool twelve year olds. Because when it’s all said and done, after all the hand wringing and criticism, people will retire to the privacy of their homes, and when nobody’s looking they’ll fire up their computers, search for the cheapest resource for the next thing they don’t really need…no doubt it’ll be Amazon…and…click. If Amazon would ship to us in unmarked boxes to conceal our hypocrisy from our neighbors and maybe even ourselves, it would be a perfect system.

Bottom line – we’re addicted to stuff. And like all addictions, our addiction to stuff has dramatically skewed our priorities and perception of reality. The fact is that the roughly 105 million US households of today consume more than every other household in the history of the Earth…COMBINED. And still…we’re not satisfied. Everything we do seems to require more consumption. New class at the gym…new outfit. Weekend camping trip…new / better gear. Vacation…new wardrobe. Can’t hit a golf ball straight (who can)…new clubs. And the list goes on. We even believe that we can consume our way out of over-consumption…with “eco friendly” products of course. And the personal impact of our addiction is that we’re all just renting our lives. We dress for work in clothes that we haven’t yet paid for, drive to work in a car that we haven’t yet paid for, work very long hours so that we may pay for the clothes, car, and the house that we basically use as a dormitory because we spend most of our time working. And if we can just keep it up for the next thirty or forty years we’ll have everything paid off and we just may get a few years to do what we really want.Ironically, it seems that the citizens of the freest nation on earth aren’t so free after all. It;s true…in theory…that we can pretty much go anywhere and do anything we want…but…we don’t. Not with a house payment staring us down anyway.

RAIN RAIN GO AWAY…

We stopped in Jackson Hole,about seventy-five miles south of Yellowstone, to give my brother a call. I looked at my phone log afterwards…it was the first phone call I’d made in more than thirty days. Honestly, I don’t know why I still have a phone. Knowing that Yellowstone is a reservation kind of place, and my…um…shall we say “reluctance” when it comes to making reservations, or planning of any kind…my brother had made resies for us. Jackson Hole is a nice looking town. Especially the historic part, but man…talk about consumerism…I think that just about everything in the town is for sale. And the place was chock full of folks lined up to buy.

We drove up through the Tetons stopping often to marvel at their majesty. Simply awesome. Like stepping into a painting. Every few minutes the light would change their mood. Definitely one of our favorite drives. About two hours later we pulled into the Bridge Bay Campground to check in. The traffic was backed up and we were rather curtly ushered into a twenty car line up by an older, portly, intense little volunteer who was either totally stressed out, or a retired mall cop. He sent me up to the kiosk to check in, AND made sure I kept my position in line.

When it was my turn I found out that we didn’t have reservations.

Ranger: “Nope, no reservation.”
Me: “Can you check under my brothers name?”
Ranger: “No. Can’t give out others info”
Me: “It’s my Brother.”
Ranger: Silent stare
Me: “What if it’s under his name?”
Ranger: Shrugs shoulders.
Me: “Can you please call the Grant Village campground and see if he’s checked in?”
Ranger: “Nope.”
Me: “Are there any other camp sites available?”
Ranger: “No.” “The parks completely sold out.”
Me: “C’mon man, I’ve got no phone service here, Grant campground has like 400 sites, and you can’t let me make a call, or tell me what site my brother has?”
Ranger: “You can get some phone service about 11 miles down the road.” Motions me back to my car.

And that my friends was that. Retired Mall Cop man escorted me to my truck and told me where to go to turn around. Driving through the camp ground on our way out I was mostly very glad that we didn’t get a site. No shade, sites so close to each other that you could roast your marshmallows in your neighbors camp fire…not the camping experience we look for. On the road in search of cell signal I recounted my conversation to all who would listen. The good news: I didn’t get myself thrown out of the park arguing a losing cause like I used too. Maybe I’m learning…??? I’m pretty sure of one thing though, if that little badge on the park staffs uniform read “camping concierge” or “I’m here to help you get a site” instead of Ranger, the experience would be soooo much better.

As luck would have it, we ran into my brother on the road about 30 minutes later – there’s only a couple of roads in the park, so it’s really not too unlikely. He went to look into cancellations and no shows, and we headed down to the Tetons where most campgrounds don’t take reservations. Ten miles from Yellowstone’s south gate we passed the Lewis Lake campground. Wyatt was adamant that we check it out. I was equally adamant the the Ranger at the desk told me that the Park was full. Long story short…we did check it, and…Wyatt was right. it was a beautiful little campground of about 40 sites…a half dozen of which were open. Within 30 minutes we were all set up, enjoying a beer, in one of the sweetest little campgrounds in Yellowstone. And that…yet again…is why I don’t like making reservations.

A chat with Larry, our campground host and a retired Yellowstone Park Ranger of nearly forty years, revealed that there are 3 small campgrounds in Yellowstone that don’t take reservations: Slough Creek, Lamar Valley, and Lewis Lake and it’s common that the people who staff the desks aren’t up to date on their status. There’s also some National Forest camping just a few minutes east of the road in the gap between Yellowstone and Teton. A camping concierge would have told me that!