Yellowstone day 2 the hike of near death

 Yellowstone day 2
We started out on a quick 6 mile hike round trip.
 It was flat the whole way , wonderfully cool weather.
Notice D in the picture above..
He had a lot of energy!
I love the crazy guy!

 Beautiful day, the kids were happy until....

 we came upon some middle aged hikers who said that they were just finishing the 17 mile one way trip on the same trail we were on. They were cruising along, like they had just started.

 So D gets it in his mind that he is going to do the 17 mile hike, the two older boys agree and want to do it as well., the lil ones and I decided they  are CRAZY and decide to head back to the RV. I kept telling them they weren't prepared, food and water wise for that long of a hike. But no one listens to a naggy mom:) Every hike we go on I actually pack way more water and food than we need so I secretly thought they would be ok. We had plans to meet up at 8pm that night at a town close to the end of the trail if they didn't make it back to the campground by then.

 Then they were off. It was 11 am at this time.

After a couple of hours of hiking they see this in the distance, blocking the trail.....

Yep its a huge Bison.. They wait for a while to see if it would move. No its not going anywhere, so they decide to go around it keep their distance so the thing didn't come and charge them!

While keeping there distance they get lost for a good hour and had to go up and over logs. 

They finally find the trail again and  are off and going. " A" has not had anything to drink at this point. Thinking he wanted to conserve the water they had, he also had no hat on or sunblock.

 They came upon the one and only trail marker about 11 miles in, that said the TRAIL CLOSED TURN BACK NOW..At the beginning of the hike we saw NO indication that the trail was closed, and we also met those men at the beginning of the hike who had said they came from that same direction. Being low on  water and sunlight at this time they determined it to late to turn  and hike the 11 miles back to the beginning of the trail, so they decided it was a better idea to continue to the 6 miles to the end of the trail. "B"  came across this skull above and thought  nothing of it until later they found out this trail went through a wolf pack territory that was why the trail was closed.

 Then they saw this foot print...

 And then saw this... D kept saying throughout all our hikes in bear country that if he whistled he was sure a bear it would get scared and leave..Nope, it just looked and looked some more. We tried to buy some bear spray before we left on this hike but we couldn't find any.

The bear was very interested in these hikers. He watched them very closely , so they decided to do what they did before was to go around the bear. Get off the trail and circle around... Yep they got lost again!
Finally finding the trail again by going back to wear they had seen the bear the first time they found the trail but no bear! They said this was scarier then seeing the bear. They knew he was close by but where?

They lost the trail again, they thought they were following the correct trail but it ended up being a bison trail. They saw this moose though, it was not on their trail. Thank heavens!
So they were lost again, this time for a long time! "A" was feeling worse, They were out of water at this point, the last can of water they had was filled with soap for some reason. So they are lost no water and its getting dark. "D" decides to call 911 at this point but couldn't get any service. They said a little prayer and were finally able to get service . Once he was able to contact the rangers, the rangers said they had been looking for them, I guess someone saw them hiking and saw the bear close to them so they called the rangers as well. So the ranger said he would send another ranger to direct them out and a couple minutes later he showed up and saw that "A" was not doing well so they called in a stretcher and 6 more rangers to wheel "A" out.

"A" with his ranger friend Chris. He was fine just dehydrated and exhausted having hiked close to 20 miles with getting lost and all. I on the other hand was freaking out. It was 8pm no one was back at camp. So the lil boys and I drove to our meeting spot, it took 45 mins to get there. No one is at the meeting spot., We start to get really worried that something has happened. So I stop the first ranger I can find and she is radioing to find out whats going on, when I finally get a text from "D" saying where they are. I show up to an ambulance and 10 or more rangers questioning my family. All ended up fine in the end. I know for sure they were being watched out for from above!