What if when we get there it’s just a huge stone painted yellow?

“Stop stop stop! Look, a….thing!”

By thing, I think she meant elk.

“Look!! Another thing!!” I shouted a reply.

“Holy. Crap. What is that thing?!”

“Well Jan, I think it’s a bison.”

The Thing. Grazing calmly at the side of the road.

We were literally five miles inside of Yellowstone National Park and we were stopped in the middle of the road and there was a 2000 pound bison standing only feet from our car, just munching away at the grass, not minding us one bit.

Yellowstone has brought me the most amount of sheer, childish joy so far on the trip. Later, after we’d driven a bit further, we came upon some sort of blockade in the road. As we neared we discovered it was a herd of these bison, just trotting down the double yellow line. I literally stopped the car and put it in park. The people on the other side were inching along behind the creatures. And we sat there and watched the ten or so bison gently clomp towards us. They were so close I could’ve reached out the window and touched one. And I would’ve too, except for the giant sign we saw as we entered the park, which clearly stated: MOLESTING THE ANIMALS IS ILLEGAL. Well, I certainly don’t want to be an illegal bison molester, so I had to stifle that urge, despite my sister’s encouragement from the passenger seat.

The Sign Warning Not to Molest the Animals

The Road Blockade

A Closer Look at the Road Blockade

A ways down we noticed a guy who had parked his giant SUV in our lane and was standing in the other lane with a giant camera mounted on a tripod. Being the smart people we are, we quickly realized that he must’ve been photographing something pretty amazing. (He was breaking another park law. That being taking photos in the middle of the road. Seriously.) Come to find out it was a black bear. A real-life-in-the-wild-black-bear. It looked all cute and cuddly from where we were but man, I bet that thing could’ve torn that guy apart in about two swipes. THAT’S WHY YOU DON’T PHOTOGRAPH IN THE ROAD, STAY IN YOUR VEHICLES, THESE BEASTS ARE DEADLY. We trailed it for a few hundred feet (from our Escape) until the trees grew too thick to get any more pictures. Then we moved on.

Just those two events made us both feel giddy. In fact every time we saw bison in the street (which was plenty) I wanted to take pictures. Finally Jan was like, “I think we have enough bison pictures.”

More Bison Photos...

The rangers estimate that Old Faithful will blow its head every 93 minutes. We luckily got there with about ten minutes to wait (+/- 10 minutes either way). After about fifteen minutes of waiting the geyser started flirting with us by expelling lots of steam followed by a few little water splashes. This went on for about fifteen more minutes. People were starting to get impatient. “More like Old Teaser,” some guy said. “Yeah, Old Finicky,” a lady replied. Nice. Eventually the geyser did spurt, but after so much anticipation it seemed unimpressive. We all kept standing around waiting for more. We all wanted to be wowed, and although it was cool, it didn’t have the awe-impact we were searching for. But, I suppose on the bright side, at least the Yellowstone Volcano didn’t blow while we were standing on top of it.

We also took in a few hot springs and smelled their sulfuric, rotten egg, glory. There were some pretty amazing colors amongst the breeding bacteria in the waters there. I kept daring her to touch it but the signs warning scalding scared her off.

We both agreed that it was all just too beautiful with the rock walls and the green pines and the snow banks and the rushing blue streams and the wildlife. Can’t really argue with the fact that it’s a National Park. Although, as the first national park created, it definitely set the standard.