Flashback Friday: Close Encounter of the Wolfey Kind

Michelle, Ryker, and I have come to an agreement. I can post about once a week. My sister has been doing Flashback Fridays on her blog for a while. Reliving wonderful memories and showcasing pictures from the P.B. (pre blog) era. I have decided to follow in her amazing footsteps.

First off, I will take absolutely no credit for for the wolf picture above, it is the result of googling wolf images. This is the best picture to describe this "incident." This story has been on my mind a lot since our camping endeavor this year and especially after our last road trip.

My mother's extended family was having a reunion in Yellowstone National Park. Tory and I were young, carefree, and childless so we just picked up and went to join them. We packed up our fabulous tent, air mattress, sleeping bags, and other camping paraphernalia and went on a little excursion. The only thing I was semi-concerned with was bears. A ranger had told us there was a rogue bear that had learned it was particularly enjoyable to belly flop on "blue" tents. Our's was blue, and I really didn't want to be body slammed by a bear in the middle of the night.

The first night was perfect, clear sky and smores galore. The second night we heard howling, but it seemed quite a distance away, and there were plenty of people saying that there were no cases of wolf attacks on human in the Park. (I now know that is because the wolves are smart and properly dispose of any such evidence making it look the mafia had done the dirty deed.) The Third night was different story. I woke up to what I assumed were the howls of wolves on the outskirts of the campground. At first I assumed I was overreacting due to my dislike of the dark and unknown, only to realize that my tall brawny husband was breathing at the same nervous pace as myself. We whispered to each other on what we should do, feeling like just laying there in our tent we were just a nice little ziploc treat for the wolves. Needless to say, we decided to try and go back to sleep and hope that they would kill us quicker and less painfully that way. But I didn't sleep. The next morning we felt much better with the howling gone, the light to aid our vision, and my father and uncle discussing the firearms they had brought with them. We all decided to take a little walk a couple hundred yards to Yellowstone Lake. What did we find? Very large wolf tracks that had obiviously been following a deer. The scary part was, when we had first heard the wolves howling, it was from the opposite side of the campground. Needless to say, the tent will now be used for backyard camping, and reinforced trailers will be used for Yellowstone.