July 26, 1975
Trout Tripping in America -- a testimonial.
We somehow managed to find Utopia (again) in the Wyoming wilderness (sometimes known as Yellowstone Park to the tourist). It took a 3-4 mile hike to a beautiful spot by the Firehole Creek, which was teeming with trout and a pool with a waterfall.
Did a whole hit of Windowpane. Had only done half hits before at the Grand Canyon and Bryce, but it wasn't really much different. Oh, it got a little heavy in my head for a little while, but that soon passed and I really had a most memorable, memorable trip. Let me tell you about it.
I woke up early this morning, about 2-3 hours before the rest. Walked up above the falls and immediately caught two beauts, which I had for breakfast. Karola was up by this time, but she didn't stick around long enough to eat any. Pity. Her English is getting better, but I have to remember to fill her in on what's happening sometimes.
Jerry and Linda and Michelle got up soon after and we dropped acid around noon. I spent the first couple hours walking upstream. Found some beautiful trout sunning themselves, asked a toad how to beat the mosquitoes, but his advice was to not exist (ignore them). Typical of a toad.
Also found a cow skull, which made me think of "Grendel." Such a far out book. Maybe Grendel is a bear.
I finally came back. Took a dive/swim and it was so eye-opening I can't describe. Then I spaced out on the falls. There were two logs bridging the upper and lower streams with some branches sticking under the falls. They looked like the words, "to fly." Concentrating on those, the moss on the surrounding rocks stood out in a psychedelic green and the falls turned to alternating waves of green and red.
Later I took a look downstream. It turns into a canyon. I spaced out on a purple daisy, which was so intensely beautiful, so three-dimensional. And what colors! Purple and yellow pulsating in a kaleidoscopic way.
The relentless mosquitoes drove me back to the falls, but this was not much relief, for they all seem to come out around 5 o'clock. Karola took the worst of it, I think. So intelligent yet so naive. I ought to fill her in more often. Everyone took refuge in the tents, but I decided the time had come to do some serious fishing. It was not easy, since I had broken the rod earlier in the day. Inferior wood. Need a good fiberglass.
I finally rigged it together, caught a few symbolic fingerlings downstream from the falls, and then I headed off upstream to where I had met the toad this morning. I tried fishing along the way, but no luck. I finally figured out that I should go upstream as far as I was going to go and fish on the way back.
Immediately I landed two beauties and lost a third. Caught eight all told on the way back, which were enjoyed by everyone.
The campsite was 10D3. We had a lot of hassles getting here. We left Black Canyon of the Gunnison with eight people: Me, Karola, Jerry, Joel, Robbie with big tits, Linda with the Colombian, Michelle, who is near deaf, and Bill. But we left Bill off en route to the Tetons. I was driving. When we left him off at I-80 in Wyoming, were weren't in the state five minutes before we saw a rainbow from end to end.
I was really up for trucking on through the night to the Tetons, but we ended up stopping and sleeping in some hellacious spot filled with sagebrush by the side of the road because of Joel and Robbie. They insisted we stop so they could go at it.
We got a good start the next morning, but not good enough because by the time we got to Yellowstone, there were no campsites. So we went to Old Faithful. Karola and I took a little hike of the place, but Joel was pissed because we were gone so long. I think it served him right for holding us up the night before. I was so bummed out that we had stopped that I could only get drunk on the way to Jackson Hole.
Rich and Colleen from Connecticut joined us that night. We found a camping spot in the national forest in Montana. The next day Rich and Colleen split for work in the park.
We did drive up to see the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which was pretty nice, comparable to Black Canyon in depth, but quite colorful. I drove back, but I didn't watch the signs and ended up going the long way back to camp.
The next day we finally got it together to backpack for a couple days. We arrived at 10D3 just at dark on the first day.
But lord was it worth it.