And there she blew!

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I am writing my blog via Microsoft word to publish at a later date. Carol’s tent had everything else but wireless. What the hell, Carol? So where do I begin? Do I continue with Carol’s tent? Because it survived an entire night of crazy wind and thunderstorms with torrential downpour. Good tent, Carol! Or do I begin with the fact that I wasn’t mauled by a bear, gored and stampeded by bison, punctured by an elk, or boiled alive by some hydrothermal vent. Nope, I am safe and sound. Happy Mom?
So, I’ll begin with yesterday. Yesterday, I departed from Custer , South Dakota to Yellowstone. What should be a fairly typical 400 miles turned into an over 10 hour affair. I didn’t know this, but Wyoming is actually the richest state in the union as they have oodles of money to throw away on needless road construction. One lane highways, where you need to follow a leader vehicle—a leader vehicle which drives at only 5-10 miles per hour, as it is a golf cart. Hell, pure hell. So that 400 miles, while yes extremely beautiful was also excruciating.
Once we arrived in Yellowstone it was 7:30pm Mountain time. A thunderstorm had just worked itself up, and we were in a race to get our camp site ready and set before it came down on us. We managed to pull through, though it began raining and the sun began setting. We cooked our first dinner in the dark, teriyaki chicken, asparagus, and potatoes. It was quite good given the circumstances. Of course, we ended the night by a fire with rain and beer. The side of rain was quite annoying, making me curse the whole camping idea, but I survived it.
The rain continued into the later hours until it began thunderstorming throughout the entire night. Tents amplify the sound of rain, just so you know. It sounded like gunshots, every damn drop.
This morning we got up and moved. We cooked eggs and coffee on the grill and headed out for a hike. Needless to say, after 5 days of driving, my legs were a little confused when I required them to move. They were complaining, as were my lungs. When did the air get so thin? Or, when did I get out of shape? Nope, when did the air get so thin…. We hiked around the Yellowstone Canyon for about 4 miles. I can completely tell you the geology of this whole park, including the canyon, the amazing rocks I examined, and my interpretation of the geologic history, but I will spare you. Justin told me not everyone likes rocks as much as I do.
Then, since we were missing Chloe, we decided to drive around the large loop road. On this drive we saw geysers, and hot springs galore. We saw the largest freshwater high altitude lake. I know that that sentences has a lot of qualifiers, like freshwater, and high altitude, but in all honesty, it was a huge ass lake. With of course, snow capped mountains surrounding it. I’ll give it to them. We saw elk, tons of buffalo (one literally crossed our path touchabley in front of us) , and we just nearly saw 3 bears eating an elk, but we were a tad too late. We just saw the dead elk. The bears were frolicking in the distance, only to be seen by a serious pair of binoculars.
What we weren’t too late for was Old Faithful. Having no knowledge of it’s schedule, we showed up to a massive crowd. Parking lots were overflowing, and people were everywhere. Eating ice cream, sandwhiches, chicken legs. It’s quite the carnival. Justin and I walked around until we finally saw the miniscule sign that said “Old Faithful Geyser”. See, all the other signs said, food, groceries, beer, bathrooms, lodging. None actually told you were the damn geyser was! Finally, we saw the sign that pointed us to where we needed to go. We stood amongst hundreds of people. Apparently right on time! Sure enough, it blew. Spectactular! Seriously, we shouldn’t even be walking on ground that geothermically active. But hey, money can be made and it was amazing. While Old Faithful erupted, I also did. I didn’t expect such emotion and excitement. I cried, I actually cried. I’m such a dork. I never thought I would even see something this cool. Despite all the commercialism, something needs to be said about how this beautiful place can simply amaze people by existing. Improvements can’t be made, and additions made it feel cheesy. I’m glad, I was still wowed by the experience.
We continued our drive back to camp after that. We made a delicious steak and corn on the cob dinner. We made smores. We talked about our agenda tomorrow, played cribbage and drank some more beer. We never did decide on our agenda for tomorrow. Maybe more hot springs? Maybe grand teton? Maybe, who knows?
Until next time…
Dana

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Photos

Yellowstone and Glacier 002
Lower Falls, Yelloswtone River Canyon

Yellowstone and Glacier 003
Lower Falls

Yellowstone and Glacier 005
Old Faithful

Yellowstone and Glacier 014
Buffalo

Comments

[Maria Gump]

Happy
Of coarse I'm happy.lol But Dana, crying? Crying? There's no crying in National Parks :-) By now you're heading out of Glacier..can't wait for the next blog..can't wait to be part of the blog! Love you both! Have fun and be careful!