On Monday morning Enrico had a work meeting, so I walked over to the Rendezvous Nordic Ski Trails with my skate skis to try them out before it got too hot and mushy. Unfortunately, with the very hot weather yesterday and freezing temperatures last night, the trail was quite icy. I kept having my ski slide out unexpectedly, which was not good for my knee, so after trying just a bit of the main Rendezvous trail, I took the first cutoff and headed back.
After resting for a bit, Enrico and I decided to head out to the Rendezvous trails again, this time to do classic skiing. The Swix thermometer read in between blue and purple waxes, so I waxed my better classic skis with the warmer wax on the bottom and cooler wax on the top. The trails were nicely set, so I thought it would be more fun to use my higher performance skis. We headed down the “In and out” trail to the main Rendezvous loop. So far, so good. Once we hit the uphills, though, it turned out my waxing job was terrible. I was either slipping or sticking, and each time, my knee jerked, it hurt more. We went a bit further than I had gone skating, but still failed to do the whole loop. When we got back to the hotel, I did some intensive icing and elevating of my knee for the rest of the day.
On Tuesday, I continued with RICE (Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation), then we walked over to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. This is a nonprofit organization that has bears that would have had to be euthanized if they had stayed in the wild because they had learned to get their food from humans and were becoming “problem bears.” The bears are rotated into the area where people can view them every 30-45 minutes. The wolves are always in their areas, and there are two packs in separate enclosures. There is also an indoor riparian display with trout, snakes, frogs, salamanders, and otters. There are also different otters that rotate into the water area. During the summer, one can also see raptors, and they are expanding the bear area.
After walking back to our hotel, we had a short nap and then walked over to the Rendezvous Nordic Ski Trails. My knee was better, and I went with my slow, sturdy, waxless skis. It was warm in the afternoon, but not as warm as the day we arrived, and we had a long, slow, pleasant ski, completing the whole Rendezvous Loop plus the aptly named Deja View loop, which has multiple beautiful views of the mountains in the Park.
On Wednesday, we slept in and then headed back to the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center. We got to see some different bears this time. Seely & Condi, some siblings were out with Bo. They ran around and Bo took turns wrestling the younger bears. We also got to see Sam. I made a little video of Sam digging for food. I was the only human observing him, and I wasn’t that far from him. At one point, he looked up at me and moved his nose back and forth. His nostrils flared and fanned as he took in my scent. Yes, I forgot to wear deodorant today.
We also saw some exciting wolf behavior. One of the dark wolves did not like the ravens stealing their food, and when one got too close, he lunged at it. A couple of the gray wolves got into a tussle too.
In the otter habitat, there were two otters instead of one, so we got to see them interacting with each other.
After spending a couple of hours observing the animals, we went hunting for food of our own. Most places were closed, but the Slippery Otter was open, and there was only one other table occupied, so we felt reasonably safe eating there. Since it was Saint Patrick’s Day, there was a corned beef special, so we got that and a Guinness beer, which was a wonderful treat.
After that, we had a nap and when we woke up, we headed out to the ski trails, where we explored a couple of trails we hadn’t been on before—Dead Dog and Doug’s doodle. Dead Dog had a fun downhill S-turn and then a very long climb that started out very gradual and then got steeper and steeper. One feels like a dead dog by the time one gets up that segment! We skied for 2 hours and saw only one other skier. It was very beautiful, but some of the trail was already starting to ice up by the time we finished.
We walked back to our hotel room with the sense that we had definitely gotten our money’s worth on the 3-day ski trail passes. It was also very convenient to be staying at the Holiday Inn, as we could give our car a break and walk everywhere we wanted to go. The in-room jacuzzi tub, fridge, and microwave allowed us to stay in our room most of the time, which made it feel a bit safer to be traveling during the pandemic. Because Yellowstone Park closed on Monday, March 15th, there were very few guests in our hotel anyway. Most of the town’s businesses also closed this week. It’s good we came prepared with our own food for most of our meals.
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