Blackwater Creek trail

Somewhere around the halfway point of the Northfork Rd, which takes you to the east gate of Yellowstone is a Firemans memorial. It also starts you on the trail to get you to a couple trails. Aparently once upon a time you used to be able to drive the two miles to the trail head, but lack of a 4 wheel drive vehicle, it's not all that reccommended today.
The trail starts off on the road you used to take, and currently that you take to get to a place where you can ride horses. The trail starts out over this....(to me at least) ominous looking bridge..it kinda resembles logs cut in half and nailed on either thinner tree branches or possibly 2x4's.. I didn't look at the underside to really know. I just know it didn't feel teh most stable to me, so I didn't like it. The majority of the trail was a gentle grade up the mountain, except for one spot where my lungs and legs were screaming at me.
The thing that sucked about the trail was it wasn't well marked, and there were lots of briars along the side, making it a bad trail to decide to wear shorts on. We saw several mule deer along the way, which is always a fun sight, and much to my delight there were many wildflowers along the way. I haven't compared my pictures to the guide to local wildflowers we have to know what we saw for sure.
There were a few trees fallen across the trail, which made for a fun time going around them. The worst though.. was the swampy sections. We had to rock hop the one time to keep going, which was less than fun... but no one got wet.. at least nothing more than a toe or so. We finally came to a point, where there was a tree or two across the trail that may as well have been saying.. you shall not cross... we didn't see any way around it, at least with me having a day pack and Randal having Sierra in a pack. We turned around and tried looking for the parking lot across the river. I off trailed it to get a better look and found the trail that crosses the creek...which wasn't possible today as it was far too fast moving and deep today. On the way back up, I discovered the actual trail and other than a minor rock hop and some ill placed briars on the only dry spot, it was a far better route than the one I took to get down to the creek.
It was a nice 4 mile round trip hike (or around that anyway).
Apparently the actual trails start around where the tree stopped us.. The one takes you to two very nice memorials to teh firefighters who lost their lives. One sits on the spot where they died, the other stands in the spot where the survivors were rallied to so they would survive. Apparently vandals have destroyed most of the signs and trail markers. What a shame! Randal wants to hike it all the way at some point and possibly get a community service project going to restore the signs and such...it is after all a memorial trail for brave men whom gave their lives many years ago. I guess the actual trail is about 7 miles long.. and fairly strenuous... joy! I don't suppose I'll be seeing it for myself anytime soon..I'm still trying to acclimate myself to teh altitude and trying hard to lose weight so that maybe those longer hikes won't be the death of me.
Even though I didn't like the mud for walking in, it does provide useful information, such as what animals have been in the area.. we saw a partial print of a big cat.. probably a cougar, a possible bear track, and a canine track.. most likely either coyote or someones pet.. although, it was the only time I saw a dog track, and it wasn't going in the right direction to be traveling with people, so I'm thinking its a safe bet it was a coyote.
There were also other signs of wildlife.. lots of little areas dug up a bit. It could be a bear rooting for roots, bulbs and insects.. could have been a badger or wolverine...althought wolverines are extremely rare, digging for bugs.. could have been a coyote scavenging, or any number of other critters.
I enjoyed the hike. Sierra slept through half the hike, and fussed anytime Randal got off trail on the way back lol. We guessed the hike took us about 2 hours. We forgot to check the time when we left and I forgot to grab the cell phone ..which is mostly used as a clock lol.
until next time...