July 26 - Yellowstone

By this time in our trip Jason and I have been to almost ten national parks. We were headed into Yellowstone and I really didn't expect anything spectacular because we had already been to so many parks and each one was so extraordinary, what could possibly be left? I was horribly mistaken. Yellowstone was far more interesting than I thought! It took all day to go through the park and it was totally worth it. With the amount of activities and trails within the park, one could easily kill an entire week.

We started at the sulphur springs hill. They have boardwalks winding up the hill because visitors are forbidden to walk on the dried sulphur.

It smelled like eggs gone wrong but I found it fascinating that the hills looked like a waterfall in pause.

Boiling sulphur water. No Touch!


Jason almost kissed this deer.

Tower Falls. This was after I had fallen twice down the pathway. One time in very old horse poo poo. Awesome.

Macro'd moss

Lower Falls. Jason and I had jumped the fence and climbed a very steep slope for this amazing view. We laid on our bellies and looked over the edge, too afraid to stand and look over in case we might get dizzy. There was definitely a reason why the point was not part of a trail. Climbing down the slope consisted of sliding on my butt over sharp rocks and gravel while grasping onto twig branches. Jason tip toed down with mountain goat agility while I floundered like a fish on dry rocks.

I had already been so impressed by Yellowstone and then this happened...

Out of no where a bison crossed in front of our car.

We turned a corner and found we were again not alone.

I most certainly had not expected to be surrounded by hundreds of Bison in such close proximity to our car! At certain points I could have hung my hand out the window and gotten a hand full of Bison booger.

This guy was not going to move. He stood half in front of the car, half in the grass for about 10 minutes. We were afraid to go around in case he spooked, so we waited. I think my only words the entire time were "Oh my god. This is so cool."

Bubbling sulphur ponds. Stinky Doo Doo. The Bison would gather around the ponds for some reason. Maybe the bugs leave them alone there? Maybe they enjoy the smell? Maybe they are being punished?

Dragon's Mouth Cave. The woman standing behind exclaimed with a deep southern accent, "I feel like I'm at the entrance to Hell!"

A mud cauldron.

Old Faithful. Jason got there just in time to grab some food and a seat on the porch. It was pretty neat. Fun Fact: Old Faithful is no longer the most active geyser within the park. I don't know what the other one is.

After the show we found a campsite within the park. It started to rain and storm pretty bad so we went to bed pretty early. Some hours later Jason and I were both awoken to the sound of a howling coyote outside our tent! I don't know how far or how close he was but lets just say he was close enough to be too close. The howling went on for several minutes until he abruptly stopped. We heard nothing from him the rest of the night.

Some minutes later I had fallen back asleep and apparently made some weird heavy breathing/growling noise in my sleep. Jason woke me up with a panicked "Is that you!?" I responded with a groggy "No! I don't know. I was sleeping." "Ok, because if its not you, than something is right by your head" he said laughing.