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?