After we woke up, or decided to get out of the tent and start a fire, we had some breakfast (doughnuts, milk, granola bars, Dinty Moore brand beef stew), took an hour and a half by the fire to warm up and packed up camp.
Our plans for the day were pretty generic: find a hike, see Old Faithful, finish off as much of the perishable food we had and drive to Idaho.
Step one turned out to be old faithful. We drove to that part of the park, walked around the gift shop and found out the time of the next eruption. 11:35am. We had some time to kill, so we walked around some more, then got some seats at the Old Faithful amphitheater or whatever. It turns out that a lot of other folks had the same idea:
There were a lot of people there. A lot. Luckily, we got there early enough to get a good seat (front row!) and settled in.
I snapped a few pictures with the extra time, which I magically put together into one panorama, of the surroundings. There were a bunch of ancillary steaming piles of rock in the background (apparently, this is the largest concentration of geysers in the world) which was kind of interesting:
Note: All of the pictures in this blog are clickable. If you don’t want to squint, click on the picture and it will bring up a larger image to check out. Aren’t I thoughtful.
Around 11:35am, surprisingly, the geyser started to bubble up a bit and finally shot two hundred degree water into the sky:
It was incredibly underwhelming. While it’s a cool phenomenon, and I don’t quite understand why it happens, Old Faithful was quiet and short. I was hoping for some more noise at least, but it was quieter than my shower. It also didn’t shoot water all that high in the air. Oh well. I’ve now seen it.
After that slight disappointment, we set off to find a hike. We found one. We pulled into the little visitors parking lot, parked the car, and saw this:
I’m pretty sure that the enormous raven there could eat that Hyundai if it wanted to. It eats a lot, that I can attest to; when we got back from the hike, there was a huge stream of dried bird feces running down the car. It was glorious.
The first thing we saw on the hike was a crazy pool of steaming mineral water:
I have never really seen anything like that, so I thought it was quite cool and resisted the urge to jump into it to see what it was like. Also, Amanda told me not to get too close it it repeatedly.
Further up the trail, we happened upon a lone bison (there are no wild buffalo in America, dummies) in the middle of a big steaming field of dead stuff:
He was just kind of standing around, not really doing much, and we found it odd that he (or she) was alone, as bison are herd animals. Luckily, we found out shortly thereafter that he was just enjoying some time away from the herd:
His (or her) herd is way back there in the distance. I relate to this bison, as herd are the worst.
A few minutes of walking after that, we crossed paths with a comically sweaty Englishman. He was drenched, but helpful. He told us to be on the lookout for a diversion from the trail that goes up a little hill and leads to a great photo opportunity. We thanked him, parted ways, made fun of his sweat a little bit (there was a lot of it) and kept our eyes peeled as they say. Not long after that, we happened upon what he was talking about.
We climbed the hill, which was quite steep/slick and saw what he was talking about:
That thing is crazy. Super blue, super warm and super good looking,
Amanda enjoyed it, and rested:
After that, not much else of interest happened, we saw this thing though, which makes for a cool picture:
We didn’t go that way. We will not be persuaded by arrows made of wood, only by overheating men with Cockney accents.
On the way out, I took one more picture in Yellowstone…:
…we found a picnic area for lunch and got rid of as much as we could (hot dogs, Doritos, lunch meat, corn on the cob, etc). I didn’t get a picture of it.
*Aside*: Are German people mean and unhappy, or do they just come off that way? When we pulled into the picnic area, we parked near a picnic table (duh). A mid-fifties German fellow was walking up to the table when I parked the car, so it appeared that he had already claimed it. I asked him if he wanted me to move the car, as no one really wants to stare at someone else’s car while picnicking, and he just told me no, in a kind of mean tone. I asked him if he was sure and he repeated the same response.
A few minutes later, his wife and family (I presume) had made their way to a different picnic table. He grunted something like, “my wife has moved us” at me and that was the end of our interaction. He seemed really pissed off. I know Germans aren’t known as a delicate people, but jeez. *Aside Over*
After lunch, we packed up again and headed to Idaho. Idaho is the most desolate place I’ve ever been. It was incredible.
There is nothing in that picture. Plus, I stood in the middle of the road for minutes taking the pictures to put together. I didn’t get run over or even see another car anywhere. Something tells me that the next post might be short.
Until next time, America…
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