My first question was, "Can we see Old Faithful?"
I had never been to Yellowstone before, so of course, the quintessential tourist spot was first on my wish list.
Nate said that Old Faithful was commercialized but he would go with me.
The second day of our vacation, it was supposed to thunderstorm and even snow in the Tetons, so we thought that would be a good day to hit Yellowstone. We ended up sleeping late and lazing around a bit, so we showed up with the majority of the crowds right at noon.
Driving through the west entrance in Montana (check another state off my list), we followed the main road past some great tourist spots. Nate remembered seeing paint pots and the Grand Prismatic Spring when he visited with his family as a teenager, so he thought we should stop by those spots too. They were right on the way to Old Faithful.
On a normal day, the Grand Prismatic Spring is aglow with bright turquoise, vibrant green and metallic yellow colors as it bubbles forth its hot waters.
The thing is, when we went, the temperature was hovering in the 40s. Hot water and cold air makes...steam.
We walked past so many Asian tourists up to the spring, and instead of vibrant colors, we could barely see the people next to us. The entire area was a cloud of steam, to the point that the side of our faces next to the spring were actually wet. Tendrils of my brown hair darkened to almost black, and Nate's hair looked gray on half his head with the beads of water that clung there.
"This isn't what I was hoping to show you," Nate said, and we laughed.
So we moved on.
I was amazed as Nate took a turnoff --- a park so big with an attraction so huge it has an exit ramp? ---- for Old Faithful. We passed shops and restaurants and thousands, I really mean thousands, of people.
After stopping off for a $17 bite --- a wrap and a sandwich, welcome to tourist country --- to eat, we went outside for the approximately 1:45 p.m. eruption of Old Faithful.
As we stood in our rain coats, cold droplets continued to fall. A family group came up next to us as the temperature dropped and one boy said, "I think it's snowing." Some of the raindrops had frozen on their way to the ground.
Old Faithful gurgled as the masses of people watched. I was amazed at the number of people who showed up for a simple geyser eruption. I got my camera ready for the sight.
Then the water started to shoot up into the air.
But we could barely see it.
Again, the heat of the water and the cool of the day made for a majestic sight --- a giant cloud that appeared to be made of erupting water on the side where the wind slightly blew the steam away. I smiled to myself and shook my head.
Not what I expected.
We pushed our way past crowds, and I apologized to Nate for making him wade through all the people just to see Old Faithful again. I knew that was not what he wanted to do, but he let me have my fun.
So we got back in the car and drove north to the Lamar Valley. We stopped off at one overlook to laugh at the sight of all the heated vents in the area. On a normal day, you may not notice all the steam being put off, but on this day, it was obvious every time we passed even the smallest of vents, because the ground puffed white smoke.
We got about a half-hour north and knew we would only have about an hour and a half to hike before we needed to drive the two hours back to our tiny house. However, we ended up hitting an area with road construction.
"It will about 20-25 minutes," the lady with the stop sign said.
"OK. That's fine."
It was only about 10 minutes before cars coming from the opposite direction started to pass us.
"Well that wasn't too bad, only 10 minutes," I commented.
But cars kept coming. And coming. And coming.
It was a solid 25 minutes worth of cars coming from the north, and we were almost going to turn around, when it was finally our turn to move. Nate shifted the low-lying Camaro into drive, and we headed out following a white truck.
It wasn't far before the road in front of us disappeared.
This wasn't road construction. This was road demolition. The Camaro bumped along the rutted path, and Nate gingerly tried to avoid as many potholes as he could. Then we saw the white truck in front of us bump down into a giant puddle, dirty water splashing halfway up its tires. My eyes widened as I tried to figure out how the Camaro was going to make it through.
Nate found some high ground on the edge and plunged past.
By the time we made it through a half hour of off-roading, there was only one car behind us. I have no idea where the lineup of cars decided to turn around, but I'm not surprised they did.
Our time was up. Now have to go around the other side of the park to exit and not hit the road construction again, we had zero time to hike.
We dealt with crowds, people literally parking on the road and rushing out of their vehicles to try to glimpse a grizzly, line-ups of pedestrians standing on the roadway to try to see a black bear and her cubs --- masses of people who didn't care about the fact that these are wild animals and that other people may be trying to drive.
We oggled over the Lamar Valley and were saddened that we didn't have time to explore the majestic beauty on this overlooked side of the park.
Nate had asked me what I really wanted to see at Yellowstone, and I told him a bear. We had passed buffalo, elk, deer, a coyote, and then finally at one of the hold-ups, someone outside the car said, "A black bear is sleeping under a tree."
I got out the binoculars and spotted a black lump under a tree in the distance, wearing what appeared to be a dog collar.
A black bear.
Cool.
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