people are not going to be happy

We began Saturday by getting back on the horse so to speak and strapping on our cross-country skis for a trip around the geyser basin. On the path across the street from where we live we encountered two piles of poop -- one small and one large. We knew the smaller one came from our neighborly coyote but weren't sure about the big one. We vowed to check our scat book and moved on.

The ski shop does a great job of grooming the trails so we had a pretty easy go of it as we followed a service road around to path around the basin. Due to the lack of snow we had to make a couple detours into the woods to keep our skis off of the pavement. In the deeper powder we saw these tracks,

which I guessed correctly, were from a rabbit. As we got closer to the heat of the geyser we even had to take our skis off a couple times to portage the walkway.

We decided to follow the road up to the Old Faithful Inn, which is closed for the winter season. Built in 1903-04 of logs, the architect, according to the NPS website, "wanted the asymmetry of the building to reflect the chaos of nature." To me, covered in ice and snow, it reflects the spookiness of The Shining.

Having survived the hill at the OF Inn, we followed the trail around the basin and checked out the thermal features including Blue Star Spring

We rounded Old Faithful hoping to spot Wendie's water bottle, which we had lost the day before, but we ended up skiing home empty handed.

Today, we walked out the door to breakfast and, once again, ran into our local coyote, a small guy (or gal) compared to some the others we've seen so far.

After eating we headed to our much needed ski lesson. We were joined by six other guests of varying degrees of experience. What a difference a little guidance makes. An hour and half after some helpful drills to help us slide and glide, we were confident enough to hit the local hill to practice our snow-plows. While I had her beat on the straightaways, Wendie took the downhills with ease. I, on the other hand, have apparently inherited my father's lack of skill going down slope, and wiped out at least half the time. Still, our confidence was high enough to sky over to the OF Visitor's Center to chat with the ranger and our friend at the bookstore. Not only did we find out that there had been wolves spotted in the area (and the big poop we had noticed yesterday was an early Christmas gift from one of them) but we also came across Wendie's water bottle in the lost & found box.

The rest of the day consisted of working with guests and helping them get settled in the Park. Our favorite interaction of the day occurred between Wendie and a 13-year-old boy. It went something like this:

Wendie: Hi, welcome to the Park.

Kid: Do you have wi-fi?

Wendie: Sorry, no we don't.

Kid: Is there a computer room?

Wendie: No, there is not.

Kid: And there's no TV?

Wendie: No, would you like to borrow a book?

Kid: (Sigh) People are not going to be happy.