Where the sheep and the antelope play

Although we thought it would be hard to top the white rabbit sighting we decided to go for a short hike after our pizza in Gardiner. As Dave said in the previous post, there's almost no snow left in that part of the park. We hiked a short way up the "Rescue creek trail". Rescue creek was (mis)named because it was thought that it was the site of the rescue of Truman Everts. Everts was a member of the Washburn expedition who was lost for 37 days in Yellowstone. When he became separated from his party in the southern part of the park his horse ran off carrying most of his gear away. He survived by eating thistles (and as a result eventually after being found needed to drink bear grease as a laxative-imagine 37 days of an all celery diet). Luckily he had some opera glasses still with him which he was able to use to start fires to keep warm. He was eventually rescued ( just not on rescue creek) by two fellows who never received their reward money. Washburn felt that since Everts was alive he should pay the reward and Everts contended that he would have found his own way back without the rescuers. At any rate, we got treated to some good pronghorn antelope sitings and even some big horn sheep were down on the flats.