OMG, GREEN BEARS!!!

ok, so yesterday on the way out the door to the inn tour steve annaliese and i took, i was like "i don't have my keys," and kester was like, "i have mine," and we were in a tearing rush so i agreed to go sans keys (so i thought). so we take this awesome tour of the inn from this sweet, neat lady named Lucy. right before that i have sarah make me a latte at the upstairs coffee bar.  the inn is an INNcredible place. it is the beginning of and the most famous example of Parkitecture.  Charles Adams said, "there's one manmade structure in the park that looks like it grew there and that is old faithful inn. all i can say is what the greatest travelers in the world say: there is nothing in the world like it or to compare with old faithful inn."  so then we go to the bear pit for a minute, have a couple of cocktails and i absent-mindedly leave my camelback in the bear pit on the back of my chair which unbeknownst to me i absent-mindedly threw my keys into while i was going, "i can't find my keys," earlier.  so that sets off a whole chain of i can't find my keys events over the next 12 hours.  i managed to lose kester's key this morning while i was trying to find mine, but then i found hers at the end of the ordeal, thank ceiling kitteh!

last night i bet wendy medina $20 she can't go all night without drinking (she won, btw).  i drink enough for both of us and wake up this morning at 530am like gah, why am i awake this early???????  so i called east coast folks, mama and katie didn't answer but i got a hold of justin and found out he is having back surgery tomorrow, finally.  maxine kitteh is taking good care of him, i hear :)

i ate breakfast at in the snow lodge this morning--vegan burrito!  steve waited on me--i love this guy, and if you york girls want a good man, this is your dream dude.  come out and visit and hope he's still single when you get here!!!  i'm gonna bring him to york at some point so y'all may have a shot even if you don't make it out here...

Rachel Kiel and I decided last night that we were gonna hike today and we got on the purple mountain trail at 1025 (would been 830 but i had that key ordeal) and got done around 1255.  Almost to the top, Rachel, completely unbeknownst to me, sees some rangers up the trail.  I'm talkin and completely unaware ANDi startle easily AND i'm on edge for the bears, bear spray in hand, ready to use. so when we start back up, i see these things and do my flip-out startle deal (if you've ever snuck up on me, you're aware of the intensity and the hilarity of my flip-out startle), thinking they are bears or psycho killers.  the rangers are like, "did we scare you?" and i'm like, "hell, yeah, you scared the dookie outta me--I was thinkin omg, green bears!" they thought that was funny.  these were really cute rangers, one had a crazy beard so give me a little credit for thinking for one second it was a bear.  they had on gaiters and warned us of knee deep snow we were getting ready to come across.  per usual, yours truly is in shorts.  so rachel goes ahead in their tracks and following her, i do good not to get cold from the snow against my legs.  we reach the top but it's fairly cloudy so we don't have any kind of view, really. we were gonna book it back to the EDR for lunch but got stuck in a traffic jam of folks looking at bison. 

mama got a prius!  exciting!  i talked to her for a good little while this afternoon.  i miss my mama.  the other day, i called the house and daddy joe answered the phone which is rare.  he says, "i don't know why your mama didn't answer the phone, she's around here somewhere..." and later, mary said my mom was in ATL...so i was like OMG, daddy joe has lost his mind, he thought my mom was in the house when she was in atlanta, what should i do???  but mom and mary meant mom would be in ATL at the point in time mary was wanting to hang out with her. relief.