Yellowstone Adventure, Part 5

Thursday being our last day, we decided that we wanted to go see Old Faithful again and then we still had not seen the Grand Prismatic Spring, so we did both.  I didn't get any good pictures of the Grand Prismatic Spring, it was too steamy and too big to get a good shot of it, you really need to see it from above. Let me just say that it is quite impressive and, of course, bizarre.  Here is a link to see better pictures of it and read about what makes the colors, if you are interested.

When we went back see Old Faithful, we decided to do something a little different; we hiked up several hundred feet up the side of a nearby mountain and got up to the look out and watched the eruption from up there.  It was really fun and hardly anyone else around.

This big boy just ambled across the road in front of our car.

One of the most rewarding parts of spending so much concentrated time in a car with your kids is that you begin to realize where each of your kids get their irritating habits.  In my kids' case, it turns out that they get all their irritating habits from me. Like my youngest's habit of just tormenting everyone else in the car if he gets bored at all or isn't getting enough attention from every one else in the car; that's me.  Like my eldest's really irritating habit of just deciding that she is going to be the exception to our rules; that is also me. It is really startling to have it pointed out to you;  I had dubbed her "Princess Exception" when after "excepting" myself from a few rules that were an annoyance to me, i.e. speed limits, parking rules, entry/exit signs, no leaving the trail rules, seatbelt laws, no stopping in the road rules, etc earned me the title of "Captain Exception".  She just doesn't understand that all that stuff is different.  Its awesome when I do it; its annoying when other people do it.  I don't understand why she cant see the difference? 

The youngest and I also earned the nicknames Old Faithful and Young Faithful, due to our regularity of needing to stop for bathroom breaks; about the same frequency as the original namesake.  I'm pretty sure we never drove past a rest stop without stopping... Hey, I drink a lot of liquids.  

We were pretty sad to be leaving, but my mind was getting a little overwhelmed at being amazed at so much stuff.  I started craving normalcy and even found myself getting a little irritated when I saw something else remarkable. 

Just as a side note; one thing I started noticing early on and decided to pay attention to it and it held true throughout the trip:  Where are the people of color?  I saw thousands of people from other countries, especially Asians, but virtually no black people or Hispanic people.  It looked like a KKK convention up there.  Don't people of color enjoy the outdoors? 

Yellowstone Adventure, Part 4

Wednesday we went to Canyon Village, then to what they refer to The Grand Canyon of The Yellowstone River. It really is cool, but if you have ever seen the real Grand Canyon, and you were expecting something along those lines, it will leave you feeling a little underwhelmed. But take it on its own, it's really cool. There are two water falls within a mile of each other, we walked down the half mile of step switch-backs of a 600' drop to the Lower Falls, as it was way closer. There was a couple promenades built where we could look out and see the cascading water vaporizing as it shoots over the fall. It was pretty impressive, and almost as impressive was thinking about the poor slobs that built the concrete promenade. How the heck did the get the concrete down there? I've supported myself and my family with my wheel barrow prowess for a while, and let me tell you, brother; ain't no way in the world I could get a wheel barrow down that trail full of mud!

Looking over falls

Then when we got back to West Yellowstone we went to the little local museum. It's pretty interesting to think that until they put in the airport in the 60's this little community was just shut off from the rest of the world for 6 months out of the year. No mail, even for 6 months! The afore mentioned "snow plow train" was only a once a year event, in the the spring, like mid May! Now they can keep main roads clear and open year round but even in the 60's in their new airport, they were only landing small, light aircraft with skis instead of wheels for landing gear! I read that one town (Cooke City) just north of Yellowstone had a record of nearly 34 FEET of snow.

This is "Old Snaggle-tooth," a locally famous bear that got poached: the poachers got caught.

Yellowstone Adventure Part 3

Tuesday we wanted to go to the northwest part of the park, called Mammoth Hot Springs (MHS). This was problematic because the road from Norris Junction to MHS was under construction and therefore impassable. I think they save all the road construction till after school starts to avoid the massive amounts of people that come during summer vacation and just try to squeeze it in before winter, as winters here are hard and long. We saw pictures in the local museum of trains equipped with special rotary snow plows that were plowing through train high snow! But one of the other main roads were also shut down so it made getting around really slow and repetitive. A lot of it was through heavily timbered area, so it wasn't even that interesting. Just miles and miles of trees, trees, and more trees. Occasionally, one of the kids would pipe up in the back: "Wait! Slow down, I think I saw a tree!"
But after the hour and a half extra detour time we made it, but man, was it worth it!

This place is just so mind bogling: you just keep coming across park features that you couldn't have imagined and if you did, you would instantly dismiss it as stupid. So much of this park looks like bad movie props from the original Star Trek show or even Lost In Space. You see things that are incredible, as in it defies credibility. And it just keeps coming; I cannot exaggerate. Maybe since I stumbled into this without any presuppositions, it is more amazing to me, but I just had no idea.  I would say that it truly seems other worldly, except it is all centered around one thing that no other worlds that we know of have: water in its liquid form. The geysers, the prismatic pools, the steaming pools, the bubbling paint pots, just the steaming mists coming out of the ground right next to the roads, are all the result of underground liquid water sitting right on top of a volcano.   But, I digress.

So we went to MHS, we did the normal family stuff; I did my normal daddy stuff. You know, largely embarrassing my teen/tween girls. Like putting my arm around Oldest Girl and singing show tunes badly and loudly while on the boardwalk amongst crowds of people. Or when in the midst of sulfuric aromas emitting from the prismatic pools and strangers loudly protesting Youngest Girl passing such horrible gas and begging her to lay off the beans for breakfast. My boys are either too young to be embarrassed by crazy old dad, or they just think that stuff is cool, but they seem impervious to my schick.

Here are some photos which I'm quite certain that do this park no justice at all.

These white things are called "paint pots" because the consistency looks like paint boiling as air comes up through it. It is really mineral rich water as it evaporates.

An awesome rock structure that loomed out over the road. 

Incredible rock formations. 

This is Mammoth Hot Springs. 

This is a petrified redwood tree that the sign said was indistinguishable from the California redwoods. There used to be three of them, but tourists took chunks of them home until the built a fence around the last one.

This is called the "Mammoth Hot Springs Terrace"

Strange pools. 

This is called SheepEater cliff. If you look closely, you can tell these rocks are formed in neatly shaped columns. Some have fallen over into the rock pile in front and are still in neat (horizontal) formation. The kids loved to climb on them. 

Oldest Boy found a bat squeezed in a tiny crack !

My kiddos. 

The backside of MHS.

My Smokin' Hot Mountain Goat Mama. 

Yellowstone Adventure, Part 2

After leaving Colorado Springs,  we arrived at our destination 12 hours later, with nothing remarkable happening, except the remarkable fact that I managed to not kill my own children after being locked in a car for 12 hours with them. Seriously, though they did quite well, a fact that ascribe to none of our own parenting skills, but merely to their getting older.  One nice thing is that I apparently have the bladder of a 7 year old boy, because I was relieved every time Youngest Boy needed to stop for a restroom break.
As a Kansas boy, I was always impressed with Colorado, but Wyoming and Yellowstone specifically, is so, so, so much more. All I can say is this: if you haven't been, you need to. It's worth it; I don't care what state you are from, I don't care what country you are from, its worth it! In fact, I think most of the people at the park right now aren't from the USA. There are people from EVERYWHERE!  Busses full of them!
Anyway, we arrived at Two Feathers Cabin in Montana, the vacation home Herself rented on VRBO.com, to find it much nicer and better equipped than we expected. Our hosts, Bill and Rose, were also very nice and very accommodating. Upon arriving and unpacking, we discovered that Oldest Boy had inadvertently left his suitcase with all his clothes in CO Springs! All his clothes, all his candy, all his money, all his extra stuff... He was quite crushed, but Rose graciously helped us track down some second hand stuff quite quickly. WAY better than driving 120 miles to the closest Walmart!
After spending all morning getting settled in the cabin and chasing down new clothes, we finally drove back into the park, which is less than a half of a mile from West Yellowstone. Where you gonna go first? Old Faithful, of course. We were in the gift shop to begin with (using the restroom, of course) when I asked when it was due to go off. When she told us "any minute," we hustled down there just in time to see it begin, as if it were just waiting for us. We felt pretty special, anyway.

Old Faithful was certainly cool; it sure seems that is what our minds first go to when we think of Yellowstone, but it just a drop in the bucket compared to all the other awesome park features there are to see. The park web site is shockingly bad; it was obviously designed and built by some federal employees that had no fear of losing their job. It is virtually impossible to plan your trip by looking at it, so we looked at other people's blogs, and ultimately decided that we would just rely on the local's opinions. Thus far they have been very helpful and informative. 

We spent all day at the Old Faithful/Upper Basin. There were miles and miles of boardwalk, always with signs depicting little boys getting steamed to death, standing off the boardwalk over a geyser while his mother watched horrified and his father was distractedly looking elsewhere. 

Building built in 190-something. This picture doesn't do it any sort of justice; it is mammoth and goes on and on and on and on on either side of it. 

One wing

There are just thousands of interesting things to take pictures of. 

Bubbling pools everwhere

The sign said this thing grows an inch every year. 

Above and below: Morning Glory Prismatic Pool

"I've had enough of you asking for a piggy back ride! "

3 of nature's beauties! 

Finishing off the day with pizza at "The Gusher" pizzeria. 

Yellowstone adventure, part 1

We, the Fosters, are off to Yellowstone National Park. This too is a result of my impulsiveness; a story I won't go into, let it suffice to say today that many months ago I wrote it down on the calendar and made the proclamation to Herself (much to her surprise) what we were doing.  Partially to her surprise because I usually hate going anywhere at all, and partially because I volunteered to take a week off of work. And drive for 19 hours. With the kids. In a car... But similarly to The Hebrew Daniel's king Darius, I find it awfully difficult to go back on what I write in ink, especially on the calendar.

For the first leg of our trip, we went through Colorado Springs. Of course any time that we have something resembling an excuse to see our dear aunt and uncle in Colorado Springs, we jump at it. This time, though, it was with great trepidation that we went, because our aunt has cancer, and is not long for this world.  We hadn't seen them for a year, and the last time we saw them, the kids, unprepared by their negligent father, burst into tears after seeing her in the shape she was in, and that was a year ago... So we were a little uncertain of how they would react to her in her latest condition. I am proud to say that they took seeing someone they love on their death bed very poorly, but only after we left. Our aunt was hardly herself; but it was so encouraging at one point to see her rise from her bed, come join us at the kitchen table, and instruct our Oldest Girl to get some lotion and rub her arms and hands with it. She said she was doing this not for herself, but because it is good for young people to learn to be around sick people. That is Soooo our aunt: climbing out of her death bed, in order to make someone do something that will enrich their life. I almost laughed out loud at that, it was so quintessentially her. This picture of that experience is so cool, Wifey told me to shoot it, and I'm so glad I did. Oldest Girl also painted her nails; she wanted "sparklies" on her nails like Oldest Girl, but alas, we had none. 

The real encouragement of this part of the trip was our uncle, quite capable, if initially unlikely, (since he had always been the care-receiver) in the role of caregiver of his wife. What a real stud! He does everything for her, and in the complete absence of any drama, with good humor and good natured jibes along the way. 

We left there at 5:45 the next morning, each of us with nerves raw with the realization that we would never see her on this earth again. It was quite painful; and as we pulled away from their home in the dark and each of us prayed aloud for them both, there was an abundance of sniffling noses, quiet sobs, and tears. I've said it before, but I'll say it again, these two are my heros. 

In the midst of all these tears, I asked my kids if they were glad that we came, and all responded with an overwhelming "yes!"