Quick Trip to MT

No race this weekend. Instead I was off to Bozeman to photograph a wedding and see a few of my Bozeman friends. I had thought about trying to do a local Bozeman race, and Bill even offered to scare me up a bike to use. Unfortunately (or is that fortunately?) the race overlapped with the wedding by about half an hour, so no racing. It was nice to have a weekend off the bike.

I arrived in Bozeman late Friday night and Saturday was taken up with wedding set up and photography and post party clean up. Sunday was a lazy day with Laurie. I provided comments from the peanut gallery as Laurie did a cabinet cleanup and reorganization. We then went for a nice walk on the Sourdough Trail. Supper on the 31st was with Laurie and the Rognlie clan. An amazing meal and lots of fun watching Matt and the girls transform themselves for Halloween. After supper Laurie and I stopped in for a quick visit with Mollie and Tyler.

Monday I convinced Laurie to play hookie from work and we went to Yellowstone. Not a spectacular wildlife day, but we did have a couple of firsts for me in the park. The first first was we actually went for a hike rather than just staying in the pull out parking lots. It was nice to get off the road and it felt like we were the only people in the park with the tourist season over. The other first happened on the walk when we were challenged and then followed by a lone bull bison. We were well over the "do not approach within" distance outlined by the park, but I laughed at the bull as he rolled in a dust bath with his skinny legs waving in the air and both Laurie and I were wearing red. Either way, we were discussing whether we should go past him on the trail or go off trail to get around him when we decided to move a little further down the trail to see where the trail actually went with regards to the dust wallow when he turned towards us and did a short charge, halving the distance between us. We immediately headed off trail (a park no-no) and headed for some sparse tree cover. As we moved away from our friend the bull, he started walking after us. Happily he was just ambling in our wake rather than renewing his charge. We elected to circle a long way back to the trail and head back towards the car. We made it back with no harm done and continued on to Cook City before turning around and heading back to Bozeman. That night Jared and Anna took me to dinner.

Tuesday morning I got up early and met Bill for coffee/breakfast at Rockford before I headed back to the airport for the long trip home. I spent my airport and plane time working on the following week's Bio lecture and grading exams.