Something Fishy

Happy Fourth of July! I know, I’m a few days late, but I spent a significant portion of the last four days safely outside the realm of instant gratification. Most of the time, you couldn’t get cell service, not to mention wi-fi.

This year, the boytoy and I chose to forgo the fireworks and meet my family in Yellowstone National Park for fishing, camping, and cooking out. It was definitely worth the trip.

We planned on driving a fair amount on Thursday evening after work. That fair amount increased significantly due to the book on cd we were listening to. Though we should have stopped before, the book didn’t reach completion until we were almost to Cody, WY, one of the worst towns in Wyoming to search for a motel room during Fourth of July weekend. The only place with openings was a bed and breakfast that was “nice, as long as you don’t mind ghosts.” Since it was midnight already, and that sounded way too much like the beginning of a bad horror film for my tastes, we continued on and found a nice little motel just a few miles up the road.

On Friday we joined the parents and my sister and the family dog in Yellowstone, set up our tent, and went for a boat ride on the less than gentle Yellowstone Lake. We also gathered firewood, during which the brilliant boytoy decided to attempt to remove his foot with a hatchet. He didn’t succeed, thankfully.

The fishing was spectacular. My father likes to attempt to get everyone up at the butt crack of dawn and into the boat. It never works, but he still likes to try. The boytoy, who takes forever to get up for anything and everything, just hopped right up and got ready to go every time. Men.

When the boytoy and my dad went fishing without us ladies on Saturday, they apparently got skunked. However, when we all went fishing on Sunday (including the dog) the fishing was amazing. We brought in eleven fish within a few hours, with five of those being Lake Trout, which Yellowstone requires to be killed or kept. The others were huge cutthroat trout, which have to be thrown back, unfortunately. My sister claims it’s her driving. Mom claims the fish don’t get up as early as silly fishermen like to think they do. Whatever it was, we found them that day. When we went for a repeat performance the following day we only brought in one. Since we were leaving that day, it was probably a good thing we didn’t catch any keepers, otherwise we’d have to clean them. As it was, I returned home with a couple of pounds of fresh fish and a refreshed feeling from the weekend.