wrong way, right way

Last week we headed out to the Lamar Valley to hike to a bunch of petrified trees for which Specimen Ridge is named. The road from Mammoth to Tower was packed and we hit jam after jam, the first being because of this guy

Then not 100 yards down the road we hit another jam. This time some visitors were literally standing on their moving cars (not a good idea!!)

to get a look at another small black bear who was chillin' by the side of the road.

Finally, we made it to Lamar where we came upon another wave of traffic, and this time they were stopped for, of all things, a herd of Pronghorn

At last we made it to the trailhead and started our hike into the valley, when we came across four people staring up at the trail with binoculars. Their prompting told us that they had seen a grizzly wandering in the area we were headed. As not to become bear food, we decided to wait a bit. After about 45 minutes from the last sighting of the bear, we decided to go ahead and start the steep climb toward Specimen Ridge.

About two-thirds of the way up the hill we came to a fork in the trail and we decided to go left, basically because it looked flatter and the trail looked like it had been more heavily traveled. Well, we soon found ourselves all alone in a valley with no trail. It was then that we knew we went the wrong way and had to head up over another ridge to get to the top of the mountain.

At the top we were greeted by a Pronghorn coming down the trail

right at us. We moved aside and took in the view of the valley below

and in the process spotted our first petrified tree.

Soon we found a couple more, including this huge petrified log

Still we thought there would be more trees, but since we couldn't find anymore we decided to head down a different path

Soon, as we bumped into a pair of fellow hikers, we figured this trail was the path not taken and it was littered with petrified stumps all along it

After meeting another pair of hikers who knew where they were going, we started to kick ourselves for taking the wrong route, but then, remembering all the traffic we hit on the road in and would soon be hitting on the way out, we decided maybe going the wrong way alone is better than going the right way with everybody else.