Yellowstone, Pt. 4: Google Is God, Tent Incompetence, And Semipermeable Materials

Part 3

4 parts into a series entitled "Yellowstone", and no Yellowstone. You've waited long enough.

We drive into the south entrance of Yellowstone, passing through Grand Teton National Park and paying a $25 entrance fee. This pair of national parks is heavily commercialized, so we buy groceries before getting to the campsite. I can't imagine Teddy Roosevelt predicting the sentence "We buy groceries at the national park" would ever be used, but some of us wanted eggs to go with our precooked bacon.

The grocery store is also where we find out there is a bear named Three Ninety Nine. This name was funny at first, but now it reminds me of the vicelike anthropocentrism and commercialism endemic to our Yellowstone experience. I wish Three Ninety Nine had a different name. Less wallet-and-consumer-friendly-start-savin', more top-of-the-food-chain-magnificent-hunter-and-scavenger.

Even after getting into the park, it is a long drive to the campsite. We are camping at Bridge Bay, near Yellowstone Lake. We pass other, smaller lakes along the way. Each successive lake is the largest body of water The Chemist has ever seen. That drive broke one record several times for him.

We are driving along when, out of nowhere, Google Maps predicts an extremely high-density traffic zone. When we get to the zone, we see a large group of people pulled over, so many the parking lot is overfull. It blows my mind that Google Maps had the ability to sense and inform us of traffic like this. In fact, Google Maps did not incorrectly predict anything for the whole trip. The Sojourner is unimpressed, missing his sense of wonder just as he is missing a gem bug. Coincidence? I think not!

The people are pulled over because there are bears in the distance. They (the people, not the bears) sport binoculars and cameras with comically long telescoping lenses. We debate over whether we should stop, and end up deciding not to. The parking area is already overflowing, and setting up our tent is the first priority.

We pass more people gawking at distant animals (mostly bison), which will eventually turn out to be hilarious, because bison are everywhere. We had two bison and an elk right in our campsite. We could've gone up and touched them if we'd wanted to. But here are these crowds of shiny-eyed tourists jumping at the chance to catch sight of a tiny black dot five miles away.

Seriously, they were just right there. Here are two who happened to be in the same place we camped.

We get to the campsite and claim our reservation, choking on exhaust fumes the RV in front of us is emitting. The park worker at the booth warns us that bears are present and they can smell anything -- food, cosmetics, food wrappers, grills, boxes -- anything. I wonder why bears aren't already in the campsite, rummaging through supplies and trying to get into vehicles. Even I can smell the campfires and exhaust fumes. You'd think Three Ninety Nine would know about this place by now.

At the campsite, we split into two groups. The Chemist and The Sojourner go to the nearby forest to collect firewood, while The Recycler and I put up the tent. There is not a good tent location, as most of the ground is either sloped or very muddy. We lay down two tarps and start setting up the tent on a muddy patch. The time is a little after noon.

It starts to precipitate lightly. We have to hurry, or we will be caught tentless in the rain. Due to misunderstandings and fails, the process does not go as smoothly as possible. One fail has us putting a fiberglass pole in the wrong spot, causing the material to overbend and splinter. No worries though, we correct our mistake and it appears as though the splintered pole will be fine. That's what we tell ourselves anyway, because the rain is coming down heavily now, actually, ouch, it's coming down really heavily, and then we realize it's hailing.

Luckily, The Sojourner and The Chemist are back from their firewood expedition. We have four people to put the tent up and toss in supplies in a hailing, pressure-high situation. Fails continue. The top of the tent is just mesh; there is a cover that goes over the top of it. We fail to align the cover properly the first time, so we have to rotate it -- hang on, did we put it on upside down? Whatever, there's no time.

The temperature gets colder and we hit full-on panic mode, frantically putting in stakes that fail to find purchase in the more-water-than-dirt ground, realizing we have no time to figure out how to push out the tent windows, guessing what we will need: Sleeping bags? Toilet paper? Board games? We throw all of these and more into the tent haphazardly, muddying pillows, boots squish-squashing in the severe mud around us, making the interior of the tent filthy. Alvin is lost somewhere in the chaos.

This is he.

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Eventually, we manage to stabilize and get all the supplies we think we need into the tentlike thing we put up. The thing is currently sporting a splintered pole (holding steady... for now), a possibly upside down roof, and is smaller than usual because we failed to put the windows out. We huddle around, look at each other, and relish in the victory we've achieved. We made it. We showed how human-made equipment can block out nature, even when that equipment is assembled terribly.

Our mission of completely separating ourselves from nature on a camping trip is not 100% successful. It is so cold we can see our breath -- not wisps and vapors; full-on dragonbreath-steamengine-cigarsmoke style condensation. We have some superabsorbent towels, which we inevitably call ShamWows, we use to clean the tent floor. The ShamWows are highly effective and allow us to lay down, layer by layer, blankets, mats, then sleeping bags. That's six layers separating our bare skin from the cold, muddy ground: Tarp, tent floor, blanket, mat, sleeping bag, clothes. Six seems like a small number when you count it up like that. But it is enough.

The Recycler came equipped with a full raingear ensemble, or the worst Ironman suit ever: Heavy waterproof pants, heavy coat with hood, gloves, and waterproof shoes. The rest of us did not come so prepared. As such, The Recycler is the conduit between us and the outside world. Fetching supplies, fixing the tent, etc., these responsibilities all fall on his shoulders.

The Recycler looked better than what this guy tried to do, at least.

We sit back a little, consolidate. It is warm and comfortable in the sleeping bags. Someone says the tent might be semi-permeable, because they can feel water on the inside. I don't think this is the case, because (a) It took us a long time to set up, so the rooftop mesh was exposed to the rain for a long time, but, much more importantly, (b) Whoever designs a semi-permeable tent is the dumbest designer ever. That's like if I designed an unbounceable basketball, or transparent tinted windows.

After less than half an hour, the hail stops and we are ready to go see our first attraction. The Chemist has a checklist of items to view, and among them are the two waterfalls in Yellowstone.

Will we find adventure and excitement? Will we drown in the river? Will The Chemist ever recover Alvin? Find out next time.

Part 5