Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy

yo. currently caught in traffic because of a ridiculous truck fire so i thought i’d catch up on this blog.
ooook so lets see…today is the 15th and our last post covered up till the 5th…. So what’s happened since then? a lot. so we camped at a campground in yellowstone national park the day after the puggle story and that went well enough. we got to drive around the park and see some beautiful scenery and animals like deer, bison, elk, coyote, and a bald eagle. then the next day, on the 7th, is when the trip took a turn for the worse….like the ground opened up below us and swallowed us into the fiery chasms of hell. like every window in the house suddenly imploding in slow motion sending you gored and flying limply into a wall neck first. so what happened? well we pretty much decided to go camping into the backwoods of yellowstone. sounds nice enough right? wrong. the guy who booked our campsite for us was apparently an expert hiker of some sort and decided to send us to his “favorite spot” aka the most highly frequented grizzly bear area in yellowstone (thanks a million Volunteer Park Ranger Maclam). as if i wasn’t terrified enough, we were given several pamphlets saying that the place we were headed was so highly frequented by bears that we should assume they are in very close vicinity even when we can’t see them. so picture this: us hiking with backpacks equal to the weight of two midgets(very.very.heavy.) on tough terrain and being absolutely terrified the entire time. whenever jason led it was like watching a clint eastwood western due to the fact that one hand was always on his bear mace that hung at his side. oh yea, we each bought a can of bear mace ($45 each), it’s apparently more effective than a gun against bears and works exactly how it sounds.

so on this hike we are clapping and yelling “yoooooooo” and whatever else we can think of to scare bears off of the trail ahead of us. apparently, the majority of bear attacks occur because a person will sneak up on a bear accidentally leading to a surprised and unhappy bear. so after our 5+ hour hike of yelling and clapping we finally get to our campsite. now i’m no primadonna and i’m certainly no little pampered b*@T(H but that place sucked BALLS. i don’t know what exactly i was expecting…ok maybe i do…a nice big tree i can sit under and relax while reading a book or perhaps sit in meditative silence and enjoy nature….what i got? a tiny desolate patch of land with one tree that we were to use to hang up our food. oh yes. another bear fact = you have to hang up your food really high on a tree at all times unless you’re using it because it WILL attract bears. we were also not allowed to make a fire at that campsite for god knows why. the constant threat of bears as well as starvation and exhaustion was starting to wear on our spirits so we decided to cheer ourselves up by fishing by the lake and catching some dinner. so we go to the lake and wade in and……lo and behold our fishing rods break along with our spirits. we sit down on the shore and jason starts to go into a tirade that sounded something like this: “this whole thing SUCKS, there’s mosquitoes EVERYWHERE, it’s gonna RAIN, we can’t CATCH ANYTHING..” then he abruptly stops because he suddenly notices the 3 enormous leeches stuck to his feet. HAHAHA. sorry, i guess it’s funny now that i’m in an air conditioned car eating oreos.

anyways, we pretty much decided on the spot that although we were planning on spending two nights out there that we were hauling ass and getting out of there first thing in the morning. so we decided to eat our cans of campbell chicken soup and get to bed. of course things didn’t work out as planned (seeing the pattern yet?). jason had bought some water purification tablets that we used on the lake water and i guess it worked even though it tasted like pool water. so we used this water on our campbell soup….unfortunately it had some fucked up reaction with the metal can that the soup was in and the water turned black. mmmm nothing like having black chicken soup. after eating we had to wash our dishes away from our campsite because that will also attract bears and that was probably when my fear of bears reached its pinnacle. something about washing dishes in dead dark except for a tiny little lamp in the middle of nowhere with bears looming ready to eat me bc i smell like chicken soup really scared me. so we finally finish washing the dishes and hang up our stuff in a tree and get into our tent. then it starts to rain. we were pondering earlier in the day whether the tent was waterproof or not. it wasn’t. i was fed up at that point and just went to sleep while jason was taping garbage bags on the inside of our tent. about 5 minutes after i fall asleep i suddenly wake up screaming “YOOOOOOOOO”. i guess even in dead sleep my body wanted to ward off those damned bears. so we wake up the next morning and ate nothing but a granola bar or two and hauled ass out of there. i don’t know if it was bc we were so weak from not eating or the constant wear of fear on our bodies…probably a culmination of everything…but that hike back was about 10x harder. to be fair, the place we were hiking along was beautiful and we hit some really magical spots..we also caught a bald eagle in full flight so that was amazing too…of course its hard to enjoy these things to the fullest when you half expect a bear to jump out of a bush and maul your face.

anyway on the way back we ran into a yellowstone patrol officer on the trail and she asked us some questions about our camera and layed down the law by saying that we needed a permit to use any of  the stuff we filmed inside of the park. she let us keep our footage luckily but we just can’t use it for our documentary anymore. yea…i know. so we FINALLY get back to our car, unshowered, with possible spinal damage from the weight of our packs, black water in our bellies, over 20 mosquito bites on each limb, and completely shot nerves from bears. naturally, i immediately pound a delicious cold beer from the cooler in our car… best. beer. ever. with that horrifying episode over we decide to just head straight for san francisco. as soon as we got out of the park we decided to make a stop at a pizza/pc lan store owned by europeans in montana. it was pretty surreal to be eating pizza with a bunch of chinese tourists while watching the opening ceremonies of the olympics(awesome) and doodling on a computer when only hours earlier we were worried about getting mauled by bears.

so from there we drove overnight to san francisco and boy was that a journey in itself(12+ hour drive). we still hadn’t showered at this point since before our hike into the backwoods so we were dirty as hell..all i can say is red bull and cigarettes go a long way. we finally got into san francisco that morning and drove around a bit before deciding we would get a place to stay in san jose for the night. we did so and got really drunk in the hotel as a sort of convalescence if you will. i felt like a king in my hotel room with things like alcohol, shower, bed, tv…man it was great. so the next day we checked out and headed to jason’s friend hannah’s house. we split up our time between there and san francisco for about a week. in that time we checked out several spots, haight being my favorite, where we bumped heads with travis mccoy of gym class heroes and keith buckley of every time i die. random. the things worth mentioning in this time are the awesome aquarium we went to, numerous museums, some better than others (frida kahlo exhibit > egyptian museum). that’s all obviously in a nutshell but it was nice, we drank a lot, explored a lot and basically just got our heads on straight again after the whole yellowstone fiasco. today is the 15th and we effectively left this morning…we would’ve left yesterday if the car hadn’t died, got towed, and gotten a new starter ($500+)…ouch jason’s wallet.  we’re now currently in the car headed for vasilia where we’re going to see the octopus project again for only 5 bucks. awesoome. i am eating oreos and candy while typing this post and i’m still stuck in this horrible traffic after this ridiculously long blog. ok so i guess that pretty much catches up everything.

-el

(written on 15th, posted on 17th)