We left the Grand Tetons, headed north towards Yellowstone. The plan was to tour around Yellowstone, seeing a geyser or two, a buffalo or two, and definitely a moose. Stop, take pictures. No hurrying. This day (I am not even sure what day it was...) was going to be at least one day of this trip where I wasn't thinking about all of the distance I had to drive. I would be a tourist. I would get out of the car many times. I would "ooh" and "aah". And when I left Yellowstone, I would trave a short few hours, possibly as far as the Bighorn Mountains, and then stop to camp at a campground.
The day started with a shower. Amazingly, in Grand Teton National Park, there was only one place to take a shower. It had many showers, sure. Also a laundry, a grocery store, a visitor center, a gas station, and other modern lifestyle necessities. I showered, and took a walk through the woods behind the facilities, to see if Abbey wanted to take a shit in this small piece of Babylon nestled in nature. As we wandered through the woods, I thought I saw the ghost of John Muir glowering towards the gas station. He was up in a tree. All the way at the top. Dressed in a long overcoat, munching on a crust of bread he had pulled from his pocket.
As we drove through the valley between the two parks, we passed construction. There was a sign that read "Your Admission Fee at Work." I thought about it, and wondered if tax dollars still applied to National Parks too. I am pretty sure they do, but I was reminded that in California, many State Parks are in danger of closing for lack of state funding. There was a brief image of the elusive bull moose taking a big crap on the Governator's head. If you need help with this image, you should know, that like many herbivores, a moose's crap comes out in pellet form. Big piles of brown pellets about the size of shooter marble.
With the window open, I smelled something. It wasn't rank, bad, stinky. But it was a bit stinky. It wasn't offensive stinky, but if you farted, and it smelled like this, you wouldn't want to claim the fart as your own. It was a really familiar smell. I thought about it for a while, and realized that it smelled just like the off-gassing of a lager yeast fermenting when I am homebrewing beer. Rotten eggs. Sulfur. Geysers.
On the way into Yellowstone from the Grand Tetons, there is a waterfall near the road, maybe called Lewis Falls? I stopped there, like so many others, to take a picture of this beautiful, yet relatively short, waterfall. Later on I would think to myself that maybe I was just falling victim to peer pressure. Maybe there was no point in taking a picture of this waterfall. It was nice, pretty, splashy, wet, as waterfalls tend to be. It was bad ass. If it was located in Maryland, people would flock to see it. But here in Yellowstone, it was, I realized later, a shot or two under par.
Still, it was the first one, so people, including me, stopped, gawked, snapped, and left. I have to admit, I had the thought, many a time while I was in Yellowstone, that maybe we tourists weren't really there to see the beauty, or to ponder it, or to meditate in the vast awesome nature of the place, but only to steal its soul with our cameras."Honey, pull over, I need to get a photo of that."
Click.
"Okay. Got it. On to the next scenery."
I felt that way a bit myself in Yellowstone. I was sad that I couldn't hike anywhere with Abbey. I was glad when the hike to the brink of lower Yellowstone Falls was something like 5/8 of a mile and down 600 feet. In a nice gentle rain.
Before leaving California I had done some music trading with my friends, and in the process I had acquired a lot of Phish shows. It had been a long time since I had listened to some good Phish - late 90s stuff - and in this case, the music was a great soundtrack to the drive through Yellowstone. (Which, by the way, I kept calling "Yosemite", in my head. I always get the "Y" National Parks confused.) I swear, as were driving through the first hour of Yellowstone, I was hearing Phish sing "Take the highway...to the great, divide!" And so we did:
The next scenery for me was Old Faithful. I admit, I wanted to see the famous geyser blow. I drove by a number of much more beautiful geysers, but didn't stop. I went to Old Faithful, and I was lucky enough to arrive within about half an hour of the next eruption. Right now, apparently, Old Faithful is blowing its top every 90 minutes or so.
I had read that dogs were not allowed near the geyser. The review said, "but, you and your faithful companion can watch the show from 200 ft away." I walked out to the geyser area to survey the scene, and found that the geyser field was surrounded by a boardwalk with benches. Which was surrounded by a concession building, a small visitor center and bookstore in a mobile trailer, some bathrooms, and a massive construction site. Which, in turn, was all surrounded by a massive concession area, and a massive parking lot. Which, in turn, was adjoined to many other random buildings.
I noticed some other dogs relaxing with their owners on the boardwalk, so I went to get Abbey out of the car. She was, to say the least, happy about this. We walked back to the boardwalk and positioned ourselves with a great view for the show to come. About 20 minutes ahead of the predicted "within 10 minutes" of 1:10 pm.
There was lots of steam, the whole time. There was some premature bubbling. Lots of small jets of water which were false alarms. And then a whole lot of hot water erupted from a small hole in the ground
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