26.75......

(CLICK ON PICTURES TO ENLARGE)

7:22 am - Thursday - 53º F, humidity 78%, wind 5 mph out of the east southeast..partly cloudy with another chance of rain today at about 50%.

After finishing our 8.8 mile out and back hike Tuesday we talked, optimistically, about doing another 4, or 5 mile hike Wednesday to get total '100 Miles Hiking Club' total up to over 26 miles, but in the back of my head I thought "We'll see how we feel then".  Sometimes TLE changes her mind.  Well, this time she didn't......just after waking up Wednesday she suggested we hike the 'Beaver Ponds Loop Trail', which according to our handy dandy 'Yellowstone Trails Hiking Guide' was about 5 miles in length......
.

......the trail starts about 2/10's of a mile south of the 'General Store' and terminates about 2/10's of a mile to the north of the 'General Store' employee parking lot.  Anyway, armed with that knowledge we were in the VW heading up the Gardiner River Gorge to Mammoth Hot Springs around 11:15 am.  We began hiking to the trailhead from the employee parking lot about 11:40 am.....

.....the initial trail takes you about .7 miles to a junction where the actual Beaver Ponds Loop Trail begins.....from this point the sign says it is 4.3 miles to the termination of the 'Loop Trail'.  As we climbed ever higher, eventually passing 7,000' elevation, the views became big and long....

 You can just see the Grand Loop bridge over the Gardiner River in the deep background

......we began to see wildflowers in great abundance.....here I managed to capture three different varieties in one shot....don't ask me what varieties they may be, because I have no idea.......

......we reached the first of the 3 beaver ponds at the 2.8 mile mark finding that we had crossed back into Montana........

......there was shade periodically for the first 2.8 miles, but once we passed the first beaver pond we were in almost continuous shade for the next 2 miles........

.....we knew there was a chance of rain after 2 pm, and by the time we began our descent back to the 'Village' it was going on 2 pm......we reached the northern terminus of the 'Loop Trail' just as it was beginning to sprinkle.......

TLE and her hiking skirt.....just beginning to sprinkle around 2:30 pm

......by the time we reached the Beetle we had covered 6.2 miles......hmmmm....a little further than we had planned, but we felt okay.  We stopped off at the Gardiner Market on our way home to do a 'BIG' shopping, and when we exited the store the rain was falling by the bucket full. Wow, we finished our hike just in time!

So, here are the numbers.....6.2 miles hiked, almost 800' of elevation gain, 1115 calories incinerated averaging an even 22 minutes per mile.....total moving time of 2 hours and almost 17 minutes......our '100 Miles Hiking Club' total mileage is now 26.75.....we hope to pass the 40 mile mark next 'weekend'.....

We were home around 3:15 pm and had to unload the groceries in a driving rain storm, but we were grateful we had finished our hike before the rains came.  We passed probably 10 people on our way down to the 'Village' who were hiking up to the beaver ponds......I have no doubt they got a drenching.

We spent the rest of the afternoon resting.....TLE did run a few loads of laundry through the 'splendid Splendide' in preparation for the beginning of our new work week on Thursday.

Thanks for stopping by!

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