Week 3 Rotation and Yellowstone

Week 3

Alright guys, Tom at it again here with a "shorter" blog post for this week. We had rotation back at Ethete on Tuesday and told everyone about our adventures up in Jackson and Pinedale. It was another standard week of rotation with us filling, dispensing, counseling when the opportunity arose, and finishing up a Diabetes presentation we had on DPP4 inhibitors on Wednesday. At lunchtime, Katherine gave us a little extra time to drive up to Riverton to drop our friends off at the airport and still get lunch too. On Wednesday, we had our presentation during the Pharmacy and Therapeutics meeting, which everyone said went well! It was a laid-back meeting and presentation discussing the use of DPP4s and the cost-effectiveness of them in comparison with other diabetes medications.

On Thursday, after rotation, we briefly went to a trail in Lander called the Bus Loop, which we struggled to find for a little while, but once we did, we spent about an hour out there. It is a pretty neat area with tons of different trails of varying lengths for hiking, snowshoeing, biking, etc. Friday, Katherine gave us the day off because we were heading up to Cody to visit the Buffalo Bill Museum. The museum was super cool and consists of 5 separate museums in one. We spent the majority of our time in the Winchester Gun Museum, which has a collection of over 8,000 different guns, with 4,200 on display. It also had several interactive exhibits. Along with the gun museum, there is also the actual Buffalo Bill museum, which talks about him and the history surrounding him and the town, a Native American Museum, a wildlife museum, and an art museum.

After the museum, we went to check in at the Irma Hotel, which is a really nice hotel built by Buffalo Bill in the 1900s. There is a ton of cool history surrounding this hotel, with many famous people staying here over the years and even a supposedly haunted room. The people in charge of the hotel are super chill as well. They gave us the room keys to some of the more historical rooms to check out, which also included that haunted room—but sadly (or gladly, depending on your preference), no ghosts this time around. The cost for a night at this hotel for 2 people with queen beds was around $110. After we checked in and explored, we went to find a place for dinner and ended up at the Proud Cut Saloon a steakhouse that was pretty good. The food was okay, but the bartender and customers were all very fun and interactive and gave us good tips for the town. Overall rating: 6.5/10.

 

We went back to the Irma and decided to try to hit the hay early because we had to get up early in the morning to drive to our snowmobile tour of Yellowstone’s Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Falls. The people in charge of the tour, Gary Fales Outfitting, were all super nice and chill, and the tour lasted from 8:00 in the morning to about 4:30 in the afternoon. I will say, if you are interested in doing this as well, make sure you pack tons of warm clothes, as we had 3-4 layers on and this was not enough to keep us warm. Thankfully, you make several stops at warming huts along the way. This was mine and John’s first time driving a snowmobile, and at the start, John was driving and I was in the back. Tip for all you future snowmobilers of America out there: put the heavier guy in the front. John and I flipped the snowmobile once and drove off the road another time, which required us to roll the snowmobile up a hill to get back on the road. However, after lunch, we switched and I was driving us, and we had no more issues the rest of the day. All this aside, this was probably my favorite thing we've seen and done so far. Yellowstone is gorgeous, and everything is so cool and unique. It honestly seems like five national parks in one. Which, by the way, I believe we mentioned in the last post, but if you intend to visit several national parks, I would recommend the "America the Beautiful" Pass, which gives you access to every national park across the country. It is $80, while entrance fees to both Grand Teton and Yellowstone are about $35 each.




The snowmobile tour cost $425 for 2 people, and then you have to cover the gas to refill the snowmobile at the end, which was about $25, so you're looking at about $225 total per person to do this. But I would say it is totally worth it. There is also a snow coach tour that we looked into if you don’t feel like driving yourself in the cold, but we think the snowmobile was the better of the two. It would have been nice to be in the warm snow coach, but then you can only see things out of a window, and we also believe it stops more than the snowmobiles, so you may not get to see as much—but we’re not sure about that.

That’s it for this week, though, guys! Hope everyone has a great week!

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