I woke up in the morning but a fairly decent hour this time, I think. It was raining, but right by the trunk of the evergreen tree next to where we had parked, there was a dry spot which I took advantage of to stretch in an effort to calm down my unhappy nerves.
I’ve been doing a lot of stretching lately, and it seems to be helping a good bit, so that’s good. I’ve also realized that my absolutely least favorite position to sleep in appears to be the only position I can sleep in that doesn’t significantly aggravate my issues.
Flat on my back. I can’t be on my stomach. I can’t be on either side. Has to be flat on my back, or my nerves are quickly aggravated, and I end up with tingling, burning, and pain.
It’s also hard because whatever is going on with my neck, which appears to be what’s causing my owner nerve issues, leaves me concerned about having my arms at my sides. My older nerves are massively oversized, so they seem to get pressure put against them pretty regularly and pretty easily. So laying my arms directly at my sides means that all the way to my arms is pressing down directly on my owner nerves on both sides. So I have to find these creative ways of holding my arms so that there’s no pressure on those nerves.
i chuckle a little bit because I’m only 42. I think. I’m 42, right? Or my only 41… Good gravy. Let’s see I was born in 81. We’re in 2023, but my birthday hasn’t happened yet, so I guess I’m 41.
That’s really crazy. Apparently my brain is so out of it that I don’t even know how old I am. 😅
Squirrel…
I chuckle because I’m only 41 and I’ve got so many health issues. But I think I’m starting to get a handle on some of them that have been long-standing issues. I think I’m finally starting to understand what might be going on with my back and with my nerves.
Please forgive the repeat if I have already mentioned it, but I had a memory flash of my MRI report of my lumbar spine when I was in my 20s. I remember the phrase ” congenitally short pedicles.” I believe I also remember the word narrowing. And I remember that I had bulge discs and osteoarthritis already in the lumbar section of my spine.
The main thing, though, was the congenitally short pedicles. That’s probably the reason why my entire life I’ve had nerve issues, why I couldn’t touch my toes even as a young child without nerve pain shooting down my legs. When I was younger, I just thought that that was normal. They talk about the burn and the pain of stretching, but I didn’t realize until many many years later that what I was feeling was searing nerve pain and not just the stretch of muscles.
Anyway, so I’m hopeful. I want to get home so I can go read those old reports that I have tucked away in my health file. I also don’t want to go home because it’s nice to be out here with family that I haven’t seen in a good long time.
Anyway, so I was stretching underneath the tree out of the rain.
The day followed most of the recent days that we’ve spent on this trip when not at a family member’s house: We stopped at geysers and hot pots, and mud pots, and hot springs, and all sorts of things.
We walked all over Mammoth Hot springs. We stopped off at both of the Yellowstone falls, upper and lower.
Both my mom and I misunderstood the map for the lower Yellowstone Falls, and thought we had to walk the trail from the view of the falls right there from the top to get down to the overlook that’s like a mile down the road. It had been a long time since I had been there, not since my college days, so I didn’t remember or didn’t know or whatever that you could actually drive right to the lower falls outlook. So even though we were in a hurry, a bit, because we ran into photographer who pointed us to where we were most likely going to be able to see grizzlies in the wild, and we wanted to get to that area where he had been photographing grizzlies the day before, but we didn’t want to miss the falls either, so we ended up losing a lot of time walking to the falls.
Still, it was beautiful. 😊
Realizing that after we finished up at the lower Yellowstone Falls that it was far too late for us to make it to the part of the park where the photographer said we were most likely to see grizzly bears, which is on my bucket list. I think I saw one or maybe it was a black bear? When I went to Yellowstone with a bunch of college friends and my 20s. But it was far away in the distance, and I would love to see one up close in the wild.
But not close enough that I couldn’t make a safe getaway. 😅
Anyway, we saw a dual 6 point mail elk grazing by his lonesome. We ran into another bison that was munching on grass right along the side of the road. We decided to stop off at the devil’s mouth and black cauldron hot pots and geyser thingies.
We saw lots and lots of things. 😊
I saw my first, at least to my recollection, actual bison heard. Prior to that point, I think I’d only ever seen bison either on bison farms or at Yellowstone in onesies and twosies, maybe threesies.
So that was cool. And the views were gorgeous pretty much everywhere we went.
By The time we got to Yellowstone Lake, the northeastern edge of it, the sun was well past down, and there were just the last few little rays of light clinging to the encroaching darkness.
Still, having learned how to use the feature on my phone that allows you to let in more light, by holding the camera super still, I can’t remember the name of the feature right now, but having learned how to use that a little bit, I tried to take some pictures of the lake, some of them turning out at least a tiny bit.
It’s fun to learn to use some of the new features and to be able to get pictures where I would otherwise not be able to get pictures. 🙂
From there, we pointed the van’s nose east toward Cody, Wyoming, where I figured there was probably going to be a Walmart.
There was 😊.
We wanted to be prepared for our visit to my sister’s house in South Dakota, so we stopped off to see if they had some clothes and things that my mom could get. We also wanted to get some groceries.
After Walmart, we begin pointed our nose east. We had basically three choices. We could go the northern route to my sister’s place. That route, there was one campground that was an option.
We could go the middle route through the mountains, and there were probably five different campgrounds that might be available if They happened to be open.
Or we could do the southern route that was a good bit longer for our expected destinations, and only had one rest area but no camping options.
The northern and middle routes would be at least 2 hours away from where we were, getting us to our possible resting places well after midnight, and more like 1:00 or after. The southern route, which only had a rest area as an option, would have provided us a place to stop an hour earlier, if that rest area actually allowed us to stay the night there.
The middle route was the safest choice, given that it had five or so different camping spot options, the nearest of which was 2 hours away from where we were, and they got progressively further away.
So we chose the middle route, driving through lots of little tiny towns on lonely country roads toward the… I think it was the bighorn mountains? Anyway, the pass on highway 16 that goes across the mountains there in North Central Wyoming.
My geography knowledge wasn’t sufficient to realize that there were nearly 14,000 ft mountains in North Central Wyoming. I had no idea. 🙃
Anyway, we stopped off at the first of the five possible campground choices that we might run into, and to our delight, it was both available, and it was free! The fee envelope place had been all bagged up for the season, I guess, though they still had left the bathrooms unlocked, gratefully.
So that was nice. It was super late at night, so we didn’t dilly dally. We just used the bathroom, got ourselves ready for bed, and crashed.
Lift the world.
~ stephen
Lift the World 