I had today and tomorrow off so I decided I would spend them down here in St. Anthony with my grandparents (eating Grandma’s cooking is a perk).
The day before yesterday Federico, Christine, and I hiked to the top of Elephant Back mountain. There were switchbacks and snow at the top, but it wasn’t a bad climb. At the top there was a very cool view of the lake. Federico kept fussing that the “caution: bears” signs weren’t accurate and the fact that he kept yelling, “Hello! Bears! Where are you bears??!” probably didn’t help the bear situation. We went back to the dining room to eat lunch and we picked up this kid named Jason and we went to Lone Star Geyeser. It is 2.5 miles along a road that is closed to vehicle traffic. We had to wait for 2 hours for the geyeser to go off and during that time I almost-pretty much fell asleep. I had my camcorder, but seeing as how I was semi-consious at the time, there is no telling what the video looks like. I hope to be able to upload a lot of pictures at Aunt Susan’s tomorrow. (Grandma’s laptop doesn’t have a USB port.) Yesterday driving out of the park there was a buffalo traffic jam, which is not all that unusual, but this time they were obeying traffic laws (for the most part).
Yesterday was also the first day to clean rooms with guests in the lodge. I got off relatively easily because people on checked out in two of the rooms I had (occupied rooms are easier to clean), but I still took FOREVER. Beds are my downfall. Our lodge was only slightly behind. There was one lodge that was really late and there was a tour bus coming in so we all had to go rush an help out to get it clean. We have discovered that asians (while otherwise very neat) have long black hair that sheds like nobody’s business.
We have little soaps in the shapes of bears that we put in baskets on the sinks. Well, when looking through the Bible’s for tips (apparantly it’s an asain custom) my team leader found that the people in one room had put the soap bear in a little wooded box in the draw. It looked like the little bear was in a coffin. Also our nametags have our first name with where we are from underneath. My team leader had someone comment on the strangeness of his name: Drew Utah. Some people….