Sleepy September has been filled with geysers, bison, some planned guests and some awesome surprise deaf visitors, let’s dive right into my last few weeks here in Yellowstone!

First heard by a visitor, the geysers have been ‘geysing’ and I’ve been able to see lots of eruptions recently. I caught my last Beehive baptism of the season, which was freezing cold but well worth it. Caught some drier Beehives and a Castle eruption!

The bison have not been very well behaved recently, how dare they! But it has made for some interesting experiences. Some people are just so silly and will do whatever it takes for their selfie, we’ve had a few bison charges recently but no gorings thankfully.

My folks have sent a few of their friends this way, I got to give tours to a childhood friend of my dad’s Deb & Peter, as well as a high school colleague of my mom’s Becky & Walter! It’s been fun for me to train my brain on how I want to explain and express the geology behind Yellowstone in ASL and to interact with my people again!

My hiking weekends have started to slow down, especially after our interesting Thorofare travel experience. Michael and I had plans to hike into the most remote portion of the lower 48: the Thorofare trail in Yellowstone. Our original plan was to hike 3 miles after work to the first cabin, hike an additional 16 miles day 2 to cabin 2, and then hike out 19 on day 3. It was a big ask but something we knew we could handle because it was a relatively flat trail.

We checked in with the Communications Center catching a gorgeous sunset and we were off, hiking in 3 miles to the cabin.

We encountered a few light river crossings, and had daylight until our last 0.5 mile.

At this point we neared the cabin but could not locate the trail offshoot. We learned the hard way that we would have to bushwack to the cabin. So we roll into the cabin around 9:45pm and the keys don’t work. Shoot. After troubleshooting with the Comms Center and Law Enforcement, someone realizes that this cabin is one of the few exceptions to the standard cabin key. After some discussion, and with Comms approval, we slept outside next to the cabin. What. An. Experience. It was a cold night, but an experience I won’t forget, I got to share this with my favorite boy scout, who had all the right answers on what to do, we woke up at 2:30am to wolves howling, and slept under the Milky Way.

In the morning, we trekked on, as true backpackers do. But we made it a few more miles down the lakeshore and realized we were both exhausted, if we continued on we would push too hard, so we made the call to turn back, and that’s the story of our time on the Thorofare trail. We completed about 10 miles in total, and I took a rest day for the second half of my weekend.

After that chaos, I was excited to have a friend come visit me, Gia! We have been buds since we were 14, nearly 10 years now! I took her all around the basin during my Geyser Predict shift, we had a great geyser morning catching 5 different eruptions, 2 of which were predicted!

That night she met lots of my friends, we snuck into the claw foot tub room and went to catch a nighttime Old Faithful. While we were out there, we even caught the Northern Lights, my first time ever! It had a 3% probability at 9pm, but we still got to see it, a super cool moment.

Over the weekend we did light hikes and explored the touristy spots of the park, I took her out to Slough Creek up in Lamar Valley, Artist Point and the Gardiner Arch.

The second day we explored the lake and brought Anna along. We took them to Duck Lake, Lake Overlook and Natural Bridge. When we got home, Gia gave me a haircut, and we went to country karaoke night at the pub!

Overall it was a very successful and exciting trip, I was thrilled to have Gia come visit me!

I am blessed with some of the coolest friends and adventure buddies, the following week, Zenja (my roommate from last summer) came out to see everyone and stayed with me!

We watched an evening Old Faithful, explored hot springs and celebrated her belated birthday to kick off our visit!

We even got to hike out to the oldest structure in the National Park Service, an unfinished pile of logs known as ‘Queen’s Laundry.’ It was built to be a bathhouse but never finished, and this is how it still stands today.

That night, we picked up Anna and headed to Jackson. We got dinner in town, shopped around and camped in nearby forest service land, with a huge hike planned for the next day, Paintbrush Divide-Cascade Canyon. This was a grueling 22 mile hike with 4,500 ft of elevation gain and it takes you between two Tetons! We spent 13 hours on the trail from 8am – 9pm but I had the best people by my side making it quite a memorable adventure. The fall foliage was immaculate, and we all loved the hike, I’d chalk it up to one of my favorites of this whole summer!

This was the perfect final hike to wrap up two amazing summers in Yellowstone. But as I entered into my final few days as a Yellowstone Park Ranger, there was one more unexpected surprise in store for me. President Biden sent out a declaration to drop all flags to half staff in honor of Senator Dianne Feinstein passing away. As rangers, it is our responsibility to relay the news to the surrounding hotel buildings so we are all on the same page. When we relayed the message to the Inn, Michael, Anna and I were able to ascend to the roof and help lower all 6 flags with them.

Being able to get up to the roof one more time felt like I was checking off one of the last things on my list as a Yellowstone Park Ranger. It was a unique and honorable experience to lower all the flags to half staff.

With that, I am writing this last post in civilian clothes, my time as a Yellowstone Park Ranger has come to an end, but my journey with the NPS is just beginning. I learned so much during my two years here, and I am incredibly grateful for this opportunity, and thank you for following along. Cheers to the Grand Canyon next, Ranger Baer signing off.