Wednesday, August 26-Of Mice and Matchbox Cars

What a night.  I got almost no sleep.  I had fallen asleep very late, and then woke a short time later to rustling sounds.  I turned on a light and looked around.  We had no food in the cabin but I finally spotted a mouse over by our bins of clothes and bathroom stuff.  I hate mice!  He would appear and disappear, I was never sure if there was one or more than one. I couldn't figure out where he had come in.  I tried to sleep with all the lights on, but of course I could not, because I knew he was in our stuff and making too much noise.  So I began looking around for something to throw.  Matchbox cars!  I gathered up all of Jack's matchbox cars and sat on my bed.  The kids continued to sleep, luckily they were very, very tired. 

Matchbox cars make a very effective aresenal against mice.  However, it helps if you have many of them and don't have to venture into the mouse-infested area to retrieve the already-thrown cars to use again.  At one point I ran out so quickly I also used the cabin's shampoo and of course, the little bear-shaped bar of soap. 

That was especially gratifying, for some strange reason, to almost hit a mouse with teddy bear soap.  I discovered the entrance they were using was a tiny gap under the cabin's front door.  They would go out, wait 60 seconds...literally, and then come back in.  I'd throw a car, they'd go out, and the cycle continued.  I was so incredibly tired.  And at Roosevelt, there is no one on duty overnight...there is no 24 hour desk clerk to call.  I was on my own. I didn't think this warranted a 911 call.  I was on my own...me and the mice.  This went on for a while and then I realized they would never leave unless I plugged up the hole. Yes, I should have thought of that immediately but I was a tired mom traveling with kids all on my own and not sleeping well even before this.  It took me  a while.  The only thing I could think of was a washcloth.  So I waited for them to go out (just one at this point, I thought) and I ran over, banged on the door to scare them away from the other side, opened it a crack and shoved the washcloth around the area with the hole, and closed the door.  I bunched it up on the inside and it looked like it would keep them out unless they chewed it.  I waited...5 min, 10 min.  No more mice.  I left the lights on and tried to sleep but every single sound startled me awake again.  The plan had been to get up at 5 to go out for our only morning of wildlife watching this trip, because we were only in the park for one night.  I didn't even fall asleep until after 4:30.  I set the alarm for 6:20 and we were up and out of there by 7. I stopped to get coffee at the lodge and we were on our way.  It was a very COOOOLLLLDDDD morning.  We didn't pack up the cabin, we would be back to do that.  We drove to Lamar, of course.  We didn't see anyone at the Slough Creek Road so we kept going through the canyon. It was a beautiful Lamar morning!  At the very first pullout, there were a lot of cars and people looking back north, across the road, into the sage.  We pulled in, getting the last spot parallel parked by the road.  We jumped out and Rosie (as usual) went to ask what people were watching.  Wolf!  Sure enough, there was a lone black wolf in the sage over there. 

We went to get the scope and - tragedy...we had taken it into the cabin for safety the night before and in my mouse-caused sleep deprivation that morning, I had forgotten it.  Too late now.  We got Jack and Logan into position and showed them the wolf, which at that point you could see even without binoculars.  Then...we heard it.  The black wolf would howl, and there were several wolves across the river to the south that would answer.  The look on Jack's face was pure JOY.  He was so thrilled to hear it, and to be able to see the black wolf without a scope or binoculars. We spent some time looking across the river and finally did spot the other wolves.  Two grays and  a black.  They were far off and hard to see without a scope but visible with the binoculars.  In the middle of all this activity, a bunch of bison had begun to approach on all sides.  They were at the end of the rut but bison are ALWAYS dangerous.  We all crowded around the parking barrier.  They went to the sides and some stayed out by the road.  The black wolf moved off to the east and we wanted to go to the next pullout to look for her but there were bison to close to the car. 

When a few of the closest ones moved away, we made a run for it...shoved Jack in the car and everyone else jumped in.  We had made some nice friends wolf-watching and they left too.  We headed east and scouted the area but no wolf.  Turned around and headed back west, passing our friends...we stopped in the road and compared notes.  She had been seen heading west, so we all went that way, all the way to the Slough Creek Road.  There were so many routes she could have taken, it was just impossible to know where she might have gone.  So, back to Lamar. 

Near Buffalo Ranch, we saw all the wolf-watchers.  Our friend from the motel in Silver Gate was there...he remembered Rosie from our previous trip.  She told him our story and he brought us over to someone else and had us tell her. Rick McIntyre was giving an informal "talk" at the time.  They were all watching some sleeping Druids.  Finally, more Druids!  Just sleeping out in the middle of the valley, near the river.  They told us that the black wolf was probably a lone/disperser wolf that they've been seeing.  The others were probably Agates!  We headed further down to the next pullout and saw several more Druids. No pups though. 

We drove farther down to see if the otters were around but they weren't.  That was ok though, we'd had a great wolf morning!  We went back to Roosevelt to take showers and load up. I went to check out and to tell my mouse story. I left out the part about matchbox cars.  They gave me a full refund on my already paid for room.  I appreciated that very much.  We only had one night and one wildlife watching morning in the park and I did NOT appreciate the fact that I got almost no sleep due to mice,due to a faulty door frame.  I don't mind rustic at all...I know those cabins are rustic.  But it is NOT ok to have mice in the rooms, esp. when we had no food in there. I would rather camp than have mice in my cabin.

We then drove back south over Dunraven Pass again, making no stops this time...there didn't appear to be much wildlife watching going on.  We stopped very briefly at the pullout to look for the Canyon Pack but no sign of them either.  So we headed out and back through the East Entrance.  It's amazing how different scenery looks when you drive the opposite direction.  We headed for Cody, griping about the town of Wapiti, where a few years back the townspeople were griping so much on national tv about the bears in town...most of them having moved from far away to be in wildlife country.  What is wrong with this picture? I know it's wrong to generalize and certainly not ALL the people who live there were doing this but still...that's all I think of when I hear or see Wapiti, Wyoming.

We arrived in Cody and went straight to our campground, the Ponderosa.  We usually wouldn't want to stay at a campground in the middle of a town like this but we figured we'd be doing some many things in town, that it would make sense.  So we stopped and got our spot and then headed for the Sierra Trading Post store.  We went to the camping floor to see if they had replacement poles for our destroyed ones.  They didn't, but the guy working there told us to head to a building supply store and exactly how to ask them to fix them for us.  He was extremely helpful.  We followed his directions and finally found the store.  The person who waited on us at first said he couldn't help us...they didn't carry the items the guy at the Sierra store told us they should use.  He could sense my frustration (or maybe I looked desperate?) and said to give him 10 minutes and he would figure something out. He proceeded to walk around the store, looking very pensive.  He pulled some things off shelves, went into a back room, and emerged  a bit later with the poles and some kind of bracket things on them.  It looked a bit "iffy" to me but he assured us it would work...AND, we could even still collapse the poles!  I hadn't thought of that.  We thanked him profusely, paid our $2.47, and headed back to the campground.  We struggled through setting up the tent with the strange poles...they didn't work quite right, the tent was lopsided, but it seemed like it would stay up.  Then we went to put the rain fly on.
Uh-oh.
The rain fly had been shredded during the windstorm.   In our rush to pack up in the dark, no one had noticed.  We had just wasted 2 hours traipsing aroud Cody to fix tent poles for a tent that now did not have a rain fly.  You simply cannot camp in a tent that doesn't have one.  Maybe I'd do it alone in the backcountry, but not with 3 kids and all of our "stuff".  I was now FRUSTRATED.  And remember, I'd gotten hardly any sleep before due to the mice.  I didn't cry though  :)

So, back to the Sierra Trading Post store.  Our friendly tent department salesman showed us the options that they had for 6 to 8 person tents.  Yes, we have 5 in our family but tent sizes are misleading...a 4 person tent really can only comfortably hold 2 to 3 people, etc.  Plus, we have large dogs that sometimes camp with us.  So nothing smaller would work.  And I refused to get another Eureka. Our large tent that had all the problems in the windstorm was a Eureka that Marc had gotten pretty cheap and it was only a few years old.  On the other hand, our 4 person REI dome tent is 17 years old and still is in great shape. You get what you pay for with tents.

Anyway, we had several options but one of them he told us it took an engineering degree to put together.  I was not feeling particularly like being challenged by a tent at the moment.  We went home with a large Kelty 8 man tent.  It's about the size of Jen C's Taj Mahal tent but not nearly as "cool" looking but that's what they had. 

Back to the Ponderosa.  Rosie, Logan and I proceeded to attempt setting up the new tent.  At one point, Jack (being the wise, observant 6 year old that he is) commented "I should really be video-taping this".  Yes, it was probably that funny. I know I got the giggles at one point.  However, we did succeed in getting it up.  Bonus:  there is a room divider...we could now have a "boy side" and "girl side" of the tent.

We then ceremoniously deposited the old tent and poles in the campground dumpster.  I was NOT about to bring any piece of it home, we didn't have room, and what was the point?

We then headed to a miniature museum.  It was full of small displays of various western scenes...a buffalo jump, a fort, etc. 

There was an electric train that ran around the room which the boys could control and they LOVED that.  They also had many displays of historical artificacts, which of course I loved.  I loved this framed quote of Sitting Bull's too.

Then it was 7:00 and time to head to the rodeo!  The nice man at our campground had told us when to get there, where to park in order to exit quickly, and about the food.  So we planned to eat dinner there.  The gates opened at 7, the rodeo started at 8.  We got good seats and then went for food.  Unfortunately, they didn't have burgers like he had told us but we made do with BBQ pork sandwiches and hot dogs.  The kids liked looking at all the bulls, calves, and horses.  Then when the rodeo began it started with the unbroken mustangs.  Some of them were trying desperately to escape the chutes...banging their heads, necks, legs...it was awful to watch and I was afraid we were going to need to leave.  That was the worst part though.  I can't say I actually liked  a lot of it but the kids had fun and it was certainly festive and interesting.  I don't know that I'll ever go to another one though.  One fun thing that they did was have all the kids come out into the arena and they had a contest.  A bunch of calves were released, 3 of which had handkerchiefs tied to their tails.  The first 3 kids to get handkerchiefs got a prize.  Now if you know Logan, you know he seems like an extremely laid back kid.  But lurking beneath that facade is a kid that is EXTREMELY competitive.  He really wanted to win one of those prizes! 
They had the kids spin in circles and then suddenly said "go".  They all tore out there and Logan snagged a handkerchief and was the second one to return it.  He was totally out of breath, he'd run so hard!  His prize was a round of mini-golf in town.  He was very happy, Jack was pretty disappointed.  It really wasn't fair to have the older kids competing with the younger kids but oh well.

When we bought our food we went in two groups....first Jack and I, then Rosie and Logan.  I gave Rosie $14 for her and Logan to use.  When she came back she told me she didn't have enough money.  This turned into a conversation that gave me a headache...about how many dollars she had, what food she bought, etc.  I marched her back to the food stand where the girls insisted she only gave them a certain amount and that she was in fact short of money.  That was impossible based on what I'd given her.  We discussed it and they finally said they would call us at the end of the night if they counted their tills and were "over".  

After the rodeo we were waiting in line for Jack to get autographs from some of the riders and the "rodeo queen" when the concession stand called...they were $4.50 over and would we like to come back and get it?  Yes, thank you.

We got back quite late for our first night in the new tent.  I was thoroughly, utterly exhausted by this point.  What a day...