My Wanderings

Yellowstone, fall 2002

Well it all started with a great article in National Geographic Adventure....

The article was titled "Secrets of the Great Parks" and I happened to stumble upon it in my doctor’s office...where I guess it should have stayed but after asking really really nicely, and I have to admit quite often, I was finally given permission to take it along.

the section about the Yellowstone was done by Tim Cahill and photographed by Tom Murphy and made for great informative reading....it went past all the tourism spots and described the untouched "secret heart of Yellowstone", which I must tell you is the way Yellowstone is meant to be experienced .So I filed it away in my head and heart for the day I might be able to get a real fishing holiday into my busy life here at the Resort.

Just as luck should have it ,later that summer , Armin , a former customer and great guy ,whom became a good friend and whom I infected with that yee'ol'bugg we fly fisherman all have and cannot imagine living without , wrote an e-mail to say hello and told me about his travel plans for the upcoming fall.

He intends to combine sightseeing and a fishing holiday, spanning Grand Teton National Park and finishing off in Yellowstone National Park. A great big smile manifested itself on my face and well, I'd be darned, but that Article came out of that old dusty file cabinet in the back of my head that very instant .Within 2 hours I was already checking a Road atlas as to which Interstate would be the best and fastest to take and the answer of course was: none were ever going to be fast enough.

I started off at about 5 am on a cold ,cold September morning, my monster of a Jeep fully fuelled (and me knowing that would be changing quite quickly) with nothing but excitement in my head and happy thoughts in my heart of the trout soon to be falling prey to me and my fly rod. Let me tell you driving an open Jeep like mine for 1200km one way is not only a wee bit drafty and loud, but really hard on any fuel-budget as well...but I wouldn’t have taken another vehicle if my life depended on it, never had so much fun just driving...

After many oh many fuel stops and 17 hours straight driving me finally reached Gardiner, the northern entrance to Yellowstone. Having stopped at Missoula and the Three Rivers Fly shop, where the Scott Company had thankfully send a replacement rod for my beloved 4-weight which I had managed to break getting into a drift boat only 2 days earlier. Great service and one very very happy customer right here...!!!                                                                                                                                                     

I met up with Armin and Laila (his better half) who were both waiting for me outside of their hotel and there were hugs and hurray’s all around, of course there was a opulent steak supper and the occasional drink afterward .There also were many stories passed between Armin and me regarding our respective exploits in the beautiful world of Flyfishing, his taking place in Europe, mine of course around here.

Their recent wedding picture

I don’t even know when I hit the hay but I do vividly remember that I woke the next morning with a wee bit of a headache and a discontenting look from Laila which to this day steadfastly contents that I actually snore, and snore like no other human being she ever had the pleasure of being robbed of her sleep by. Something  I of course somewhat disagree with and since no one has ever been able to prove the fact that I might have a bit of a tendency to saw through an entire forest when I sleep I see no reason to change my story... ;-)

Suffice to say we got a bit of a late start that day, about noon or so, and we finally went and got our Licenses from a local shop where we of course browsed a bit and dropped more money on what Laila called "stuff" than we did on our licenses....   (Come on guys....don’t play coy, we all know the phenomenon...)

Armin had researched the streams in Yellowstone as did I and we settled on Sloo Creek for the start of our little expedition since many of the streams we did want to fish were running high and murky as we found out in the Fly shop and driving past them.

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