Yellowstone (Labor Day Weekend - 2016)

Abby and I spent a Sunday with her parents and her siblings in a minivan, driving through Yellowstone National Park. It was Labor Day weekend and we drove in from the west entrance of Yellowstone. After passing south of the wildfire zone, we walked the Fountain Paint Pot nature trail, seeing the bubbling pits, the steaming holes, and multicolored streams.

Steamy.

Thermophile microorganism's paradise 

There's something magical about the bathrooms at the painted pots. Lines of people of all different nationalities, skin colors, political leanings, and creeds reminds one that even here in the national parks, in spite of all the differences that there are in the world, we all have a few things in common. The pamphlet they give you as you enter the park warns that lines might be long due to the centennial. The pamphlet didn't mention epiphanies about America itself. 

Here's a handsome group of strangers in Firehole Canyon

I didn't know Teddy Roosevelt cosplay was a thing at YNP, but apparently it is. 

When we got to Old Faithful we flocked to the boardwalk bleachers with everyone else and found ourselves seated on the edge of the boardwalk. Easterners made jokes about how the water was going to hit them, how it was like being at a Shamu show or a Gallagher show. A German man who has lived in the states for the last 40 years sat next to me. His wife, a Floridian, explained to me that they had come out last year to ride out the storm hurricane that had ravaged Florida that week. I asked him what he studied when he was in Stanford researching. He told me he was a urologist and studied the upper and lower urinary tracts. We sat together and watched Old Faithful do her thing faithfully. There is something about Old Faithful that lends itself to blue jokes, from the crowds of people yelling "it's coming it's coming" to the German man telling me that we ought to have thrown a "little blue pill" into the old geyser. 

We saw license plates from all of these states in YNP

There's something so American about Old Faithful. We drive our cars through the wilderness, stopping to see the bison, the elk, the cranes and the trumpeter swans. And there is Old Faithful, doing it's thing day in and day out, ready for the 20 minute tourists and the perennial Gallagher jokes. A strange piece of nature, conveniently packaged for our consumption.

I didn't get a photo of the large herd of Bison we saw, but I did sketch some.

At the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, we took the short hike down to the brink of the lower falls. From the platform next to the river you can stick your head over the edge and see 1,000 feet of roaring waterfall cascading into the canyon. 

I love how waterfalls create little green microclimates!

When you are on the edge of a cliff, hearing the roar of water falling, and seeing the canyon walls above you, it becomes hard to be too jaded about life. It does, however, become easy to imagine yourself careening over the edge and dying. 

Someday I would like to spend a whole month exploring YNP. Someday I want to apply to fish and hike and see the back country of YNP. It would be nice to get off the park's extremely-well-beaten path. But for now, driving the southern loop was a great way to celebrate the natural beauty of our back yard before Abby and I jet off to El Ejido, 5,400 miles away.