Hey all! I'm still brand new here, but I figured a good way for everyone to get to know me is by sharing with you the incredible journey I had this past summer. I'm writing this for my own benefit too, and I'll try t0 update this thread as I get more of this completed. Hope you all enjoy it! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chapter One I've been very fortunate in this life. As a student at the University of Pittsburgh, I was presented with an incredible opportunity this past summer; I had the chance through school to take a 4 credit, 4 week summer class, but with a catch -- we'd be spending our time in Yellowstone National Park and the Shoshone National Forest. To make it even better, we'd be staying at a guest ranch smack dab in the middle of the Shoshone National Forest. How on Earth could I pass up a chance like this?! My trip started out with an VERY early morning and a red-eye flight out of Newark International Airport, around 5;30 A.M. In the grand scheme of things, it's not too early, but being a college student, it was torture! Despite the early morning and the accompanying irritability, taking off with the rising sun was pretty cool. Before I knew it, my flight had touched down in Denver. While waiting on my flight to Billings, Montana, I met one of the other students from the class, Levko, and got to discussing our upcoming month out west. After a couple of flight delays, we finally boarded our small plane for a short flight to Billings. As the plane circled in for a landing, I got a chance to see the landscape I’d be spending the next four weeks of my life in from above; I was astonished. It was nothing like the landscape back east, and nothing short of spectacular. I got off the plane at the tiny airport and was greeted at the bottom of the main stairwell by my crazy geophysics professor, Dr. Bill Harbert. I had had him for class in the spring and gotten to know him, and would only get to know him better over the next ten days I would spend with him before he left and another professor came in to teach a different subject. At the airport, I had a chance to get to know the other students; it was a little awkward at first, but we became fast friends. In this whirlwind of new faces, we had yet another one to meet; Papa Joe, the short, stocky, laconic ranch owner with a thick mustache and a cowboy hat. Our luggage was loaded into his truck, and we hopped into the van that would become our second home for the month with Bill. We had a three-hour ride back to the ranch, and so our ride quickly became filled with conversation about ourselves and about the landscape. We drove through seemingly endless miles of dry ranch land before we began to see the mountains rise up in front of us. Our long drive had taken us to the scenic Chief Joseph Scenic Byway, where the weather was vastly different from everything we had seen so far; we had traded in blue skies and sun for clouds, fog, rain and snow, and crisp mountain air. The road wound on and on, on and on. If we thought the drive had seemed long before, winding our way through the Absaroka Mountains, with all of their twists and turns, canyons, and mesas, felt like an eternity. Eventually though, we made our way through the winding mountain switchbacks to get to a dirt road that led to the quaint K-Z Ranch, which became our home. There, our van of bewildered students saw the Cathedral Cliffs rising up behind our new home. Even through the fog and rain, it still looked beautiful. We were welcomed by the lovely Barnett and Segall families, the owners of the ranch. They showed us to our cabins, which were small, but warm and very comfortable. Luck was on my side, as I only had one cabinmate, Andrew. We had a chance to unpack and freshen up briefly before being treated to a hot dinner at the ranch; at that point in time, nothing could’ve been better. We crawled into our beds that night exhausted, but excited about the journey that lay ahead.
