Yellowstone, Day 1

I think our family has been to dozens of national parks, but “Yellowstone” was only a myth to us until we drove in from Cody on this cool June morning. Strangely enough, I really knew nothing about the place before our visit besides the existence of “Old Faithful.” We planned to spend two days, knowing that that would not be enough, but also mindful that the grandparents wouldn’t be happy if we never made it to our next stop.

On the first day, our essential goal was to drive from our hotel outside the park on the east side to our hotel outside the park on the west side. (Hotels outside the park are outrageously expensive; inside the park they are completely booked and obscenely expensive.) I figured we would see some good things on the way, and then on our second day we would visit what we missed.

We started at the entrance and paid Uncle Sam his $30 entrance fee.  

We had previously passed by a moose visible from the highway, but we didn’t stop (not knowing that we would not see another one). We did stop when we saw the bighorn sheep monitoring the traffic.

I did take pictures of the sheep themselves, but since you can find those easily on the internet, I decided to share one showing how close our family was to these creatures who have curved horns but who are not ibex.

Then we went to the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone. It is really nothing like the Arizona one, but it certainly has a beauty of its own.

It is beautiful, but despite the isolated appearance above, you’re actually dodging hundreds of tourists all trying to take the same photo.

I wasn’t sure if you’d like the photo with the kids or without the kids better, so you get both.

As we continued, we saw both snow and hot springs. The kids in the above photo were wearing jackets, indicating that it must have been chilly. But we spent a good part of the rest of the day walking through thermal features. First, the snow photo:

And then a thermal feature:

And here we have two hot items in one photo:

That’s a thermal feature behind my wife, if you couldn’t recognize it. And that photo is what is known elsewhere as a “selfie.” I’ve never had much luck pointing my Nikon at me, but now that I have a phone, I thought I would give it a try. Before long, I suppose I’ll be blasting social media with selfies of me everywhere doing everything. That’s what everyone cares about, right?

I took lots and lots of pictures of cool thermal features. This is the last one I’ll show you, until tomorrow.

By the way, I’m not exactly sure who “you” are. I ran into an old student last week. We hadn’t seen each other or been in touch in more than 10 years. She told me she was reading these posts about our family vacation. I had no idea. I assume my mom is reading along, but she hasn’t mentioned it, so I’m not really sure. The only other person I know of is Roberta. So the “you” here may indeed be a singular “you.”

Here’s one last photo for the day, taken on an extended walk we did around the Norris Geyser Basin. We almost didn’t get in here because the entrance had a roadblock. But a minute after we were forced to keep driving past it, I did a U-turn to go back. At just the moment we returned, the park ranger was removing the barricade. Another ranger later told us that they block the entrance when parking fills up because they don’t have a parking lot monitor because Congress cut their funding. I’m supposed to write my congressman. OK. Seems like the $30 fee x 4.2 million annual visitors (/ people per car) could pay for a parking attendant for a very splendid region full of geysers. Apparently not.

And one more, because I said this area was beautiful, but I didn’t show you very much.

Tomorrow we’ll head to Old Faithful, but as you’ll see, I enjoyed the other nearby attractions much more.