After I left Vancouver in late September Dustin and I had planned to meet up again in the Yellowstone National park sometime in the future, have a reunion and go hunt a treasure Dustin had found out about.

We weren’t sure if it was possible due to the weather, winter came early that year and some of the roads in and leading to the park had already been closed by mid October, putting a halt to our plans. But by the end of October things were looking up, the weather changed and Dustin said he would be able to make it sometime around mid-November. I was still in Fernie, Canada when we set a date to meet, but time passed quickly and a couple of weeks later I finally got to meet my good friend Dustin again. It was still a bit of a drive but Eddie and I managed to cross the continental divide for the first time without problems (even though the drop after the climb was kind of crazy) and made it somewhere close to the west entrance of the park. I stopped at a service station to find Wi-Fi for communication and as I peaked into the office I saw the familiar flappy ear covering hat I remembered Dustin wearing in Vancouver. Boom there was our reunion, just like that, smiles all around and lots of stories to tell. We left to go eat at a restaurant and the initial excitement nearly cost me my drivers side mirror. Dustin had organized Skydio, a drone company, to pay for his trip, he told them he’ll film some sort of off-road blading in the National park. That never happened, the real plan was to find a treasure, but thanks to the promises Dustin made we got to stay in one of those classic American roadside motels. Nice. The whole idea was based on a guy named Forest Fenn who had written a book called “The thrill of the chase” and it contained a poem with 9 clues leading the person who could figure it out directly to a treasure supposedly consisting of 22 pounds of gold, coins, precious gems and other valuable stuff. It wasn’t some kind of ancient thing, it all happened in recent times and the guy was still alive. Supposedly the treasure was to be found somewhere in the American Rocky Mountains. Dustin had heard about it years ago, even before we met in Spain and it hadn’t left his mind since. I’m not sure if he read the actual book, which might have explained some of the clues further, but he definitely spent a lot of time analysing the verses and layed them out in a way that made sense to him in the end.

I tried to keep an eye on them and their surroundings, possible bears, thankfully they both made it down in one piece. We still had to walk about an hour through the moonlight lit landscape, across the river, back to the car and then finally find a warm motel.

What a day, especially for Dustin’s fragile cousin, I think she`’ll remember it for the rest of her life. We all made it in the end. The following days were filled with tourist activities, cruise through the park in true American style and stop to take little hikes around the signposted attractions. Dustin probably wanted to look further in other spots, but he had promised his cousin that she’d get to see the National park, not just his treasure hunting spots. She was the one who put down her car for the 3000km to get there and back. We did make another last minute attempt to find the treasure in a different location, but this one didn’t work out either. Sadly the two of them couldn’t stick around for longer, they had to drive back to Canada just after three intense but fun filled days. I accompanied them out of the park all the way to Big Sky where we tried to get some last minute drone blading shots on one of the many mountain bike tracks. It didn’t work so well, the drone struggled with the trees, I am not sure if we got anything worth sharing with Skydio, the company that paid Dustin to get down to Yellowstone in the first place. He didn’t care at the time, I could see the stresses and disappointment of the undiscovered treasure in his eyes. If he wouldn’t have gone out to search for the treasure, it would have been on his mind for a long time, at least this way he got some kind of closure.

As we said our goodbyes it was time for me to get used to loneliness and sleeping in the car again. I stuck around the park for another five days maybe, I explored every last corner and spent my nights in a trucker parking lot a couple of miles outside the park, made my famed 25 Dollar front seat salads before bed and was woken up by roaring truck engines every freezing night. Other than being stopped by the police one evening because one of my front lights didn’t work nothing all too extraordinary happened the following days. I was just surrounded by beautiful nature in this wonderful national park, at peace, I forgot about most of the stresses, and I had put a halt to work. I hoped the lights would be an easy fix, only changing the lightbulb, but it later turned out to be some technical problem that couldn’t be fixed on the go, not even by a mechanic. From now on I had to use my headlights whenever I drove in the dark and sometimes, to signal other drivers I acknowledged them and was a good guy, I’d switch to the weak “always on lights”. They were not very bright and I was always blinded by the oncoming traffic (especially if they didn’t turn off theirs) I thought it was a good camouflage until I realized I could only use this method when there was nobody behind me because the switch to the weak lights turned off my tail lights, luckily I realized quite early, still, a couple of people must’ve wondered what I was doing. I didn’t want to be stopped by the police again. I only had my 16 year old European drivers license with me, which was held together by sticky tape and the next officer might not have accepted it. Funny enough the last officer said: “well if your country accepts it, who am I to not do so.” That was the only time I was stopped and it gave away quite a different image of the American police, unlike the ones you may receive on the internet.