Day 71, West Yellowstone. Rest Day.

I hope that's not Little Red Riding Hood.

This stuffed Polar Bear was estimated to be 1,400 pounds. That's about ten of me.

And there he is folks, the one you all tuned in for.

I cheated. We didn't get to see wild grizzly bears, so i went to the bear and wolf conservancy center.

For ten bucks, you can stay all day and shoot from the safety of outside the cage.

About every hour, they lead the bears into a holding pen and hide food all over the place. Then they let the bears back, and the bears find the food. It keeps them occupied so they don't pick on the guests.

This is a real wolf. of course he was in a fenced in area. But still, it was so cool watching um.



Day 71, West Yellowstone. Rest Day, “Wolves and Bears”.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009. Our little motel, The Ho Hum Motel, is a comfortable place with the largest room we have seen on this trip. It is centrally located, close to the heart of town, and the most reasonably priced of all the one’s we’ve been to.

Today we took things easy. After getting up, we hung out enjoying not having to pack up all out stuff as the routine has been the last 6 days. It was nice to know that we had a whole day to just relax and do what ever. After finding a great breakfast place not too far for our motel, we ventured off to see what West Yellowstone had to offer. There are many outfitters in this town. A lot of them specializing in fly fishing. There are tackle shops on every street we went to. There are also a lot of out door adventure outfitters as well. Wildlife watching, hiking, mountain biking, and horseback riding just to name a few. Of course we weren’t going to do any of that. We were more in the market for something less enthusiastic.

We made our way to the Bear and Wolf conservancy. A place where they teach bear awareness along with displays and live exhibits of grizzly bears and a couple of different kinds of wolves. It was a very interesting place, and we spent almost three hours there. After that, it was across the street to McDonald's for lunch. When I got there, there were maybe five people in the place. Lisa showed up a few minutes later. And by that time the place was packed. Standing room only, and the crowd kept coming. I would say that 90% of them were foreigners, myself included. And 90% of them, I mean, us, were oriental. For a moment there, I thought I was in Waikiki.

From there, Lisa and I made our way down main street to window shop and sight wee, and finally made our way to the library where we could finally get on the Internet to check our emails. There was a line there also. After that, it was more window shopping.

West Yellowstone is a very nice place to visit. Everything is quite close, and the place reminds me of an old western town. Colorful, lots of little shops , eateries, saloons, you name it. You could spend a whole day walking the streets and never run out of something to do. Yes, this was a well deserved rest day indeed. Tomorrow we are on the road again, looking at a possible 78 mile day. Good night, Ted.