What’s up everybody. Welcome to another, long awaited, update about my summer adventures here. Yellowstone has been good to me, other than this wild weather! I guess summer thunderstorms and rain is common here? But it is so out of my element! However, in the past few weeks we have had multiple lighting strikes and thunderstorms…. very weird for my native Californian soul, but I do love it.

On the work side of things, recently we had a gentleman donate an old scrapbook to us of photos that were taken of Yellowstone in the late 50s early 60s, and I had the pleasure of being the employee that spoke to this gentleman. I had a ball looking through these old photos and seeing how much the park has changed, my jaw especially dropped at all the folks feeding the bears and petting them. What a weird time to live in!

I am always up for a ranger adventure, so I went out with a couple coworkers to investigate a trail that was closed for bear activity. We hiked part of the trail and did not see any bears but found some evidence of bear on the trail so we had to continue to keep the trail closed. Nonetheless, it was a nice little adventure going up a heavily travelled trail with no people on it!

I recently gave my first formal ranger program as well. The program I gave was called Experiencing Wildlife, it was a 30 minute ranger talk about the animals we have in the park and how to stay safe when viewing them. I had a large turnout of about 45 people and think it went pretty well overall considering it was my first program!

One fun element of my job is getting to interact with kids often, including many budding Junior Rangers. Oftentimes when I am working at the desk or the Junior Ranger Tent, kids will come up with their completed books and join the ‘Junior Rangers of Yellowstone’ which consists of giving a short pledge on promising to protect Yellowstone and issuing them a Junior Ranger badge afterwards. One of my coworkers captured this sweet moment of me swearing in some new Junior Rangers at the desk, and being able to share my love for national parks with young kids is one of my favorite parts of this job.

And of course, outside of work I have been continuing to hike a lot! I have been working on tackling lots of the peaks out here in Yellowstone, they give gorgeous views and often have old fire lookout towers on top of them which give me fond memories of my summers in Graeagle with my family. Shoutout to my grandparents for cultivating my love of nature, you both truly helped me get here and I love and miss you all so much!

The peaks I tackled this week were: Mary Mountain (23 miles) and Observation Peak (10 miles). Mary Mountain was long but so freaking cool! Because it is so secluded, we saw a ton of wildlife including three grizzly bears, some bison, and a ton of bones from various animals as well as evidence of bear and wolf activity.

Along the way, we had to do about 6 river crossings, and we even found a hidden thermal river around 4 miles in! I am definitely going to come back and soak in that feature. In the middle of Mary Mountain, at the 10 mile mark, we stopped for lunch at the cabin which was by this cute backcountry lake and my friend Kyle brought us all MREs (Meal Ready Eat) which are military instant food packs. It was an interesting meal to try and overall an amazing trip, I’d definitely put Mary Mountain as one of the best hikes I’ve done this summer!

I solo hiked Observation Peak and had a blast. There were definitely some sketchy moments such as when I was a mile from the peak a thunderstorm started rolling in, but luckily all was well and I made it up to a nice lookout tower that gave me 360 views of the park. Definitely worth it!

Some other hikes I have checked out recently include hiking out to Cascade Lake, where I saw a couple Trumpeter Swans, and I did an evening hike out to Lone Star and caught a nice sunset.

As for this week’s wildlife update, I saw my second Moose in the park! This is a pretty rare find considering there are only around 200 moose in the park and they are seldom spotted, so it was an equally exciting yet nerve wracking moment to be so close (a little too close even) to this amazing animal!

AND, I got to cat sit this weekend, so enjoy this sweet, fluffy house cat I got to take care of all weekend, his name is Walter like from Breaking Bad!

As always, I continue to keep a fun and exciting social life by hosting Bachelorette nights, going to game nights and just hanging out with friends. Recently, one highlight was a holiday mashup party I went to, it was a blend of Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. My roommate Zenja and I decided to lean into the ‘Halloween’ theme by dressing up as each other, and I think we did an impressive job!

This is now my 5th update, and summer is coming to a close pretty rapidly, which means my time here is as well. Some of my coworkers are starting to leave to return to college, graduate school or pursue unique travel opportunities, and I’ve noticed at times it is easy to get caught up in all the hustle and bustle of the job, feel burnt out sometimes or not want to go to work, but lately I have been focusing on taking a step back, pausing and taking a deep breath. This summer truly is like no other, and I want to soak in every moment, every opportunity and every memory while I still can. Until next time, xoxo Rachel.