After a long blogging hiatus, there is plenty to write about. I’ll start with Yellowstone.
I use the word “awesome” far to liberally, much like in 5th grade, but that’s about the only word I can think of to describe Yellowstone…and I mean it literally. I was awe-struck (or figuratively crapping my pants) 95% of the week.
This is on the drive to Yellowstone, in Grand Teton National Park (which translates to large nipple in French, named by lonely fur trappers).
Grand Teton
They have this sign at the entrance to the park, I laughed as I’m sure everyone does.
Outdated verbiage on a sign
The first night, we wussed out and stayed at the Old Faithful Lodge. We got to see Old Faithful before dark…it was right on time.
Old Faithful
It’s kind of funny because this is what I thought Yellowstone was all about – Old Faithful. So wrong. Old Faithful was cool, but it’s probably not even in the top 10 sweetest things at Yellowstone.
We hiked about 4-6 miles per day. At first we stuck to the boardwalk hikes (boardwalks so you don’t fall through the earth into a hot spring). This is how you get to see all of the hot springs and geysers. They have this handy illustration posted at the start of every boardwalk so that people that can’t understand the sentence “thin crust, boiling water, stay on boardwalk” in one of the 7 languages posted still have a shot at living.
Thanks, now I understand
Steaming Earth
The next two nights we camped. The buffalo pretty much own the campground. One walked basically right through our site and there was a huge herd of them in the valley about 100 yards away.
Hello
We had the luxury of living here for a night
PS we suck at making fires, but at least we look good camping…
Derek Zoolander Camping Calendar
One day, we got a little more brave and went on a backcountry trail. No boardwalk, no rangers = must use brain and primitive weapons. This was a view we got of a hotspring. Cool because we could see if from above.
We are so brave
There were so many geothermal features…I can’t even remember them all. But they were all cool in their own little way. The temperature of the water affects the type of bacteria that live there. So where it’s hot, that’s where blue bacteria live and where it’s cooler, that’s where orange bacteria live.
Morning Glory Pool
We got even more brave and went on a difficult backcountry trail from the campground. The campground host said there were lots of bears and lent us his bear spray (read: huge bottle of extremely concentrated mace)…probably far more effective than a large stick. This one was scary..too scary for pictures. Kept hearing grunting from the brush. We turned around like total pussies.
We carried around our gi-normous binoculars. People with smaller binoculars always approached us and wanted to be our friend. I think it’s the binocular equivalent of penis envy. We heard “Now that’s a pair of binoculars” about 30 times. One kid called them “binoclears.”
Even braver – we went on a long backcountry hike and at one point went off trail a little to see into a meadow. There was a black bear grazing on grass. Probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my life.
- Holy shit it’s a bear
Unfortunately, this was the one time we didn’t have our huge ass binoculars. But we saw lots of wildlife with the binoculars…like a wolf, huge bull elk, elk and deer herds, pelicans, buffalo…and we probably wouldn’t have seen them without them.
The canyon area was probably the most awe inspiring. I couldn’t help but think of The Matrix while being here. I didn’t think it was real…just an image to keep me distracted from the real world. Thanks, I’ll take the blue pill…back to the canyon. Didn’t work because now I am at home, back to research…
Can-yun
Can-yun without ugly people screwing up the picture
While parking to go on a boardwalk hike, we saw something in the meadow. It was a grizzly bear and two cubs. It was exciting because they were (scary) close and we were the first ones to spot them. When people know there is wildlife around, they flock to it and do stupid things like screaming and let their small children run around. Within 10 minutes, there must have been 100 people around us. Luckily for the humans, the bears didn’t seem to care. We left before it got too crazy…all of the those people ruin the moment. It was quite an ordeal with this bear…it was in a very touristy area and at one point when we were hiking, crossed the parking lot and got itself and babies “stuck” in a small patch of forest with humans on 3 sides. I heard talk of tranquilizing it and moving it, but not sure what actually happened.
I love bears
The best part was that we got to do all of this for about what two nights at the Hilton would cost you…and of course the bears.
