Mileage: 7.4 miles (1756.5-1763.9)
We woke up early and had breakfast at hotel. I had a lot of planning to do today as I decided to take the Butte Super Cutoff, which would save me close to a week in hiking and also take me through some cool areas of the eastern part of Yellowstone that I wouldn't otherwise see.
I had all sorts of errands, from organizing food and printing maps at library, to buying a couple more topos, and mailing supplies to various places.
I felt bad having my dad do all this on his last day of vacation but I didn't really have too much other choice. I felt worst of all that he was going to take me back to the trail, which turned out to be an over five-hour roundtrip, much on nasty dirt roads, but he insisted on doing it.
When we got to the trailhead I was all choked up. I could barely manage a 'thank you' and 'love you' without crying. It seemed like my dad was close to tears too. I didn't want to cry about anything, but wanted to cry about everything - that it wasn't fair he was getting older and this might be our last trip like this together, it wasn't fair that he and my mom split up which limited my time with him growing up, it wasn't fair that he couldn't just keep walking with me, and it wasn't fair that our roles had reversed and for the first time I had to watch out for him.
I walked away quickly and almost immediately started to cry - a deep, gut-wrenching one that got caught in my throat and made me shake. And I continued to cry on and off for the next 7 miles, pumping my legs, trying to run away from the feelings which were so strong. I cried about everything and nothing.
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