road trip recap: yellowstone national park (part i)

You guys.  I thought Yellowstone was incredibly cool.  I think I may have a secret love of geology?  Anyway, the weird, almost Alien landscape of this enormous park absolutely fascinated me.  It really was like walking around on another planet at times (and the colors!).  Despite the fact that I loved the park, however, I definitely would not recommend going in the summer season.  Besides the fact that there were just SO MANY PEOPLE there, only one main road runs through the park (which is roughly the size of Connecticut).  This means that all of those people were on this one road, all the time... and whenever there was any sort of wildlife sighting, the traffic was backed up for an hour (at least).  So, bring a bike, actually--number 1 recommendation!  We got up really early our first full day there so that we could visit Old Faithful before the tour buses arrived on the scene.  It was kind of insane how quickly the attractions filled up later in the day.  We stopped at another site before going on to Old Faithful, and it was a beautiful, steamy morning, completely quiet, with only about a half-dozen other tourists around us at any given time.  When we drove by later that day the same site was so crowded it looked like people were standing in line.  Anyway, we got to Old Faithful and sat on the benches waiting for the geyser to get going.  The air was cool but the sun was warm, we were still able to get a seat right in front, and there was a really quiet, meditative calm over the crowd that made the whole thing feel very spiritual.  The awe was audible all around as the geyser gathered its strength and exploded into the air, and I even got a little teary-eyed!

My surprise love of strange geothermal phenomena definitely made Yellowstone one of my favorite parks, even though the smell of sulfur did begin to make me nauseous on our last day there...