Vacation Report: Day Four #1

After skirting north along the east side of Idaho and making a quick jog into the southeast corner of Montana we arrived at Yellowstone National Park, home of free ranging herds of bison & elk, grizzly bears, wolves, Old Faithful and Yogi Bear... or is that Jellystone?

Yellowstone has a natural beauty unrivaled on our trip. But our one thought at seeing folks stopping in the middle of the road to snap shots of the bison shambling slowly by was "Hey! We can see these in Lawton! Keep movin'!" What we really wanted to see was the hot springs geyser that everyone's familiar with: Old Faithful. We were afraid we might get our timing off (as is our inclination it seems). The show repeats approximately every 90 minutes or so. When we arrived at the parking lot we discovered everyone else on vacation had decided to stop and see how their timing was as well. So Melissa dropped us off.

Miscommunication is the bane of Man's Existence and it reared its ugly head once more. I thought Melissa was dropping us off so we could find out how close we were to the next scheduled eruption, she'd find a place to park or wheel back around and we'd plan accordingly. She already had a plan, however, for us to go ahead and see it, and she'd catch up one way or another. Oops.

I ran to the ranger's station, found out we were right on the money, just 5 minutes give or take before. So Ashley, Cassie and I stood by to wait for Melissa.

And waited.

And waited.

I searched the parking lot. Nuffin'. The girls filmed the top of the geyser as it spewed above the station building, not actually getting to see the whole thing since we didn't want to get everyone lost, the crowd was huge. I made my way back from my fruitless search just starting to get a little worried about Melissa and there she was making her way from the direction of Old Faithful.

"Did you miss it?!"

"Ummm. Yeah. We were waiting for you."

"Oops."

If only she had taken the camera! She insists it wasn't anything spectacular. I think she secretly thought it was awesome and was just trying to ease our sense of disappointment. But we didn't have time for another hour and a half wait! There was a long road ahead of us!

Despite having missed Old Faithful, there were plenty of steamy hot springs, snow, critters and beautiful scenery to see along the way. And more to see ahead of us as well!