The Beaver revisited.....

8:00 am - Saturday - June 20th - Corwin Springs, MT - 39° F, 100% humidity, wind - CALM!  Clear, blue, chilly skies today with a forecast high of 64° F.  The view this morning......↴

We haven't been this busy in a long time....nothing like social obligations to get you off your butt doing stuff, right?  We had another social engagement Friday....this one was of the hiking variety.  At dinner at Art's home Thursday night we agreed to meet at the Mammoth Hot Springs General Store at 10:30 am to hike the Beaver Pond trail.  This was one of our favorite hikes when we were here in 2017....I wrote about it here.  This hike which began at our car, and ended at our car is 6.2 miles in length.  As usual I ran my STRAVA program, but neglected to start it until we were well over a mile into the hike, but at least you'll get an idea of the trail.....

.....when we were working at the Grand Canyon back in 2017 we did several hikes with Art, and always enjoyed our time on the trail together, and we pretty much talk the entire time.....

....when you hike this loop trail counter clockwise you begin with a rather steep climb, but it eventually levels out somewhat and the views are spectacular....

 
.....while the name implies a single beaver pond, there are actually 4, or 5 along the trail....this is the first one you come to going counter clockwise....

.....wild flowers were every where, and the views continually change for six miles from heavily forested to wide open views......

.....almost home.....at this point we have covered 4.3 miles of the actual trail, but have walked close to 5 miles....about 1.2 miles back to the car from here.....

 The Lovely Elaine is still smiling after 5 miles!

TLE at the end of our July 26, 2017 Beaver Pond hike...smiling as always

 When you see the hot springs you are very close to the end

.....the entire hike, end to end, took about 3 hours.....we saw no bears, or beavers, but did see elk, and deer several times.  Upon our return to the cars we bid adieu to Art who had an appointment to keep, and went inside the General Store to buy some Wilcoxson's  ice cream, and then back outside to sit at a picnic table in the sun to eat our spoils.....what a great way to end the hike.

Of course, every 6+ mile hike deserves two rewards, and our second reward was to soak for an hour in the Yellowstone Hot Springs hot pool, which seems to have remarkable healing powers.  By the time we exited the hot pool we felt like limp noodles....totally relaxed, and no more muscle ache.

On our way back home we stopped at the Gardiner Market so TLE could buy a pizza for dinner that night.  She adds a lot to a basic store bought pizza to make it her own....in this case onions, black olives, mushrooms, and anchovies.....when it comes out of the oven you would swear it was homemade.

And that my friends was our Friday....we returned to the coach to find our batteries at 100% once again with all the sun we had.  Friday was the first day in a long time we have had so much sun, no wind, and no rain.....wonderful!

The end of day 3 on the Yellowstone River

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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.

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