I've been here before, but only on a pass-through basis; a pit stop photo op if you will, back in maybe 2016 when I took the kids and my mom out to Yellowstone. This time I decided to make it my first overnight. In planning my trips I generally know where I'm going to stay every night and have a general sense for what I want to do every day but I like to keep things general and just figure it out as I go along, following my gut at the time. That's hard to do when you have small children, its easier when they are older, and its the way to go when you are all along on a trip. I made a reservation at the campground just outside of the park and headed west, leaving home with the hope of getting there well before dark and doing some exploring-what exactly that would look like, I was not sure, and frankly, didn't really care. Something would come up!
I arrived around 7, grabbed a map, bought my annual National Park Pass online and hit the trails. I did two short hikes which were both actually really awesome. The first was the Paddock Creek Trail starting at the Halliday Well Trailhead. Mine was the only car there. It was late in the day so I was not intending to hike very far, but I thought I could get in a 45 minute hike before danger of dark set it. I figured 20 minutes out, maybe see Paddock Creek, and then turn around and come back. Off I went.
The trail starts out going through a prairie dog town which was pretty neat. I've seen prairie dog towns before, both from the car driving by and from roadside observation points, but I've never actually walked through the middle of one. The prairie dogs are loud and they make weird noises. It was very cool to be immersed right in the middle of their world. After the town, the path took a couple of turns along a gulch and then started a gentle climb through brush and low trees. There were rabbits everywhere.
At about the 20 minute mark I decided to try and take a panaramic picture because I was literally all alone in the world (my prairie dog and rabbit friends aside) and I felt serene and relaxed and joyous all at once. My heart was so full I felt I might burst and I wanted to capture the moment. So I took the picture (which turns out, did not turn out) and then realized one of the travails of hiking alone in a strange place in the middle of no where. I had literally NO IDEA which direction I had come from. A mild panic started to form in my stomach which, as I turned in circles and frantically tried to match the very not good panaramic picture I had just taken with my surroundings in an effort to ground myself with SOME landmark, quickly escalated to more-than-mild. I was stumped. I was at least 20 minutes from my car, assuming I could figure out which way to go. It was 7:45 on an August night which means there is still plenty of daylight this far north, but maybe not if I went 15 minutes the wrong way and then had to trek 45 minutes backtracking for half of that...and I had not even brought a water bottle because, heck, I was only going to be out for a very short hike.
Yes, I tried looking at the footprints but it was very dry and there were no footprints. I tried to remember where the sun was compared to where I was going but the trail had twisted up and down, back and forth, around natural landmarks, through gullys and whatnot that I had no idea where it was relative to where I was at that particular time. My sense of direction is pathetically lacking at the best of times. What to do?
Finally I settled on thinking about the last actual landmark I recalled and, picking a direction, I started walking. I gave myself 10 minutes to find something familiar. If I didn't see something I recognized in that time, I was going to turn around and head the other direction. It was a freaky feeling. In all honesty I had not been paying much attention to where I was, I was just following the trail and reveling in nature and the aloneness. Lesson learned (not very well, as I find out later in the trip on a whole other trail).
Final answer: I had a 50/50 chance of getting it right and I did get it right. Lady luck was on my side. I made it back to the car at 8:30 (picture of the sign at the trailhead is marked Aug 10 8:30 pm), drank half my bottle of water, and headed off for my next adventure. The panic having faded somewhat, I was set on finding another trail to sample before it actually got dark.
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