the feckless father: 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.