Old Faithful

Sunday, July 11, 2010

Yellowstone National Park, finally. Yellowstone is obviously your typical tourist attraction because there were fifty eleven million nits. The term nits is used by Sammy to describe the fact that there are too many people in this particular location. This word was used quite often on our trip to Yellowstone. It was impossible to park at the basins on the way into the park because of the tons of nits. We gave up and set our course directly for Old Faithful. When we reached the viewing platform for the Old Geyser we only had to wait 15 minutes. We lucked out. We, along with at least a thousand other nits, waited patiently for the faithful eruption. Let me rephrase that, Hoke wasn't very patient. Let me see if I can recall his quote while waiting. He stands beside me with a lethargic stance, leaning against me as if he couldn't hold himself up and says, "This is the most boring thing, ever". Don't worry, I didn't pinch his head off, or not yet, anyway. After the eruption, we made our obligatory trip to the gift shop/junk cavern to scope out any hidden treasures/dust collectors that some might call souvenirs. Back at the RV, we plotted our course through this park and set sail. When we entered the park, the ranger gave each child a paper to check off any animals they might happen to spot while on their visit. I have no doubt they thought this was a good idea, thinking perhaps the children would quietly keep their eyes peeled for wildlife. It worked for about 159 seconds, then the children that came with us decided to disagree on what animal that had just seen and argue thusly. One would check off an animal on their list and another would exclaim, "that wasn't a so-and-so" and "why did you check that one, that wasn't a such-and-such?, "yes, it is", "no it's not". After about thirty minutes of constant bickering, I really wanted to take the papers back to the ranger and explain to him what havoc he had caused (what was really going through my mind was wadding each paper up in a ball and throwing them at the unsuspecting fellow), but Sammy wouldn't turn around. The ones we are pretty sure we spotted were bison, mule deer, deer, swan, pelican, duck, raven, geese, magpie and maybe a wolf.

If you enlarge this picture and zoom into the center you will see what we think might be a wolf at the edge of the cliff


Sammy got his wish of seeing a bison up close. We sat in the vehicle while this one made it's way our direction. As it passed us, it crossed the road almost causing a Harley-Bison accident. The bison made the huge motorcycle look small. Poor girl driving it had to have wet her pants.

There was steam coming from some so many places in the park. Look at the distant shore and there is a bison on the left.