Back from vacation

It is July and we are home from our whirlwind trip to Yellowstone (which I keep accidentally calling Yosemite -- so odd that the names of the two most famous National Parks start with the letter "Y"). We were gone only four days, but it seemed longer. A strenuous trip. We had glorious weather, though. I thought we were going to have heavy rain every day, but the rainstorms were brief and just left everything clean and shiny. Most of the time the sun shone and the sky was a brilliant blue.

Yellowstone is an incredible place, so many things to see. Because it is so incredible, everyone in the world wants to see it, and they were all there, with us, seeing it. Maybe two-thirds of the people we encountered were from another country. Also, due to the floods last year (and probably general wear & tear), road construction was going on all through the park. So everywhere we went, millions of other people went too, and we kept having to stop because it was a one-lane road due to the road construction. And if there wasn't any road construction, people were stopped anyway, to look at wildlife.

It took us hours to go anywhere in the park, see anything. And the crazy thing was, it was totally worth it. I mean, Yellowstone is amazing. Everyone should see it. All at once, all 8 billion of us. In cars, clogging all the roads.

***

We packed up Rocket Boy's rental car and left Boulder at exactly 10 am on Tuesday, June 27th. My goal had been to leave at 9:30, so 10 wasn't bad. We got gas in Cheyenne, but drove on to Wheatland, Wyoming for lunch (167 miles), which we ate in a hometown kind of place called Western Sky's Family Diner. It was nothing special, but nice to eat somewhere other than a chain restaurant. After lunch, we put in some serious mileage (325 miles), driving through Douglas, Casper, Shoshoni, Thermopolis, and finally reaching our destination -- Cody, Wyoming, where we stayed at the Kings Inn. 

We were struck by how little traffic there was on the roads. It's possible that most people take I-25 and US-14 to get to Cody, but that's much longer. We were very happy to be cruising along on US-20. The Kings Inn was a little strange -- the lobby is full of taxidermied African animals. But we had a room on the second floor with three very comfortable beds, so I was happy. 

After snacking all day in the car, Teen A wasn't hungry, but Teen B, Rocket Boy, and I went to the restaurant in the historic Irma Hotel where we had an absolutely delicious dinner. I had something called a Bear Salad, made up of food that a bear would like to eat, not actual bear meat. The Irma Hotel was also full of taxidermied animals, or at least their heads, but since they were locals -- deer, elk, moose, pronghorn -- not endangered species, it didn't seem as bad. 

One thing I should mention: on his way out to Colorado, Rocket Boy stopped to take a walk at a rest stop in Kansas and managed to acquire several dozen chigger bites on his legs! This was a great worry on our whole Yellowstone trip, because we were afraid his lymphedema leg would get infected. His legs both looked terrible, covered with big red dots, but no infection developed, thank goodness.

Wednesday morning we had a rather unfortunate experience at the free breakfast in the hotel. When the kids and I went down to the lobby, all the tables were full, so we waited around and suddenly I noticed a free table. That is, no people were there, but the table was still covered with plates and glasses and lots of food. I asked the people sitting nearby, and everyone seemed to think the previous occupants had left for good, so I carried all their plates and cups to the trash. I was coming back for one last load when the previous occupants returned. 

I apologized PROFUSELY for throwing away their breakfast, and we grabbed our food and hurried to our room to eat there. It was awful, and of course the kids teased me about it all the rest of the trip.

We checked out of our hotel around 10 am, still rather hungry, and drove the 50 or so miles to the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park. 

My original plan had been to spend Wednesday seeing the sights on the eastern side of the park. But when we stopped on the side of Yellowstone Lake and the kids got excited about the little fumaroles in it, it occurred to me that it might be better to do the stuff Yellowstone's known for (i.e., Old Faithful) on the first day, before the twins got bored and fractious. (I mean, they're perpetually bored and fractious, but, you know.) 

So we drove another 65 miles around the lake and over to the historic Old Faithful Inn, where we thought we'd have lunch. It took us approximately One Million Years to drive there, due to traffic and road construction, but when we arrived (at about 2 pm), they were still serving a buffet lunch, so we had that (it was OK, nothing special, but they were nice enough to charge the kids the "children's" rate), and then went outside to look at geysers.

Old Faithful erupts more or less on schedule, about every 70 minutes, but there's no internet in the park and we hadn't looked it up ahead of time, so we didn't know, when we left the inn, what time it would be erupting next. We also didn't know where it was (it's right across from the inn). But we could see something erupting off to the left, and there were a lot of people there, so we walked over there. As we walked, many of those people left that geyser and walked back toward the inn, but I just thought they were tired or something. So we went and looked at the geyser ("Castle Geyser") and only later realized that the people were walking to Old Faithful to watch it erupt.

No matter. We started walking along the boardwalks to other geysers, more and more and more geysers. Teen A got tired quickly and went back to the car, but the rest of us continued for over an hour. It was quite warm, and I was glad I had my hat (Teen B had no hat and was wearing flip flops, as is his wont). But it was so fun! Every few feet there was something else to look at. Geysers, pools -- everything was bubbling away like mad. And the sky was the bluest blue and the clouds were white and puffy and the wildflowers were so brightly colored they seemed almost fluorescent.

Teen B ended up finding the coolest thing of all, though, and it wasn't a geyser. Past the "Chromatic Pool" (in the photo above) there was a little bridge across a stream, and there were wooden pillars along the bridge (holding up the railings) with holes in them, on top and on the sides. Earlier, crossing another bridge, Teen B had looked in the holes and found a disgusting assortment of garbage, so he looked again here to see what people might have thrown away. But on this little bridge the holes were full of birds! 

We found two Violet-Green Swallow nests (one with a parent sitting on it) and one Mountain Bluebird nest. I know we scared the birds, but I couldn't stop looking at them (though once we figured out those really were bird nests in the poles, I stopped putting my eye up to the holes). Two of the prettiest birds in the world, and there they were, busy feeding babies (in one case I think a Violet-Green Swallow was sitting on eggs).

For me, this was better than geysers and chromatic pools, even though those were great too.

Finally we walked back toward Old Faithful (we'd been walking about 70 minutes), just in time to see it erupt! We'd missed it the first time by being idiots, but that long walk on the boardwalk gave us another chance to see it. We missed the very beginning, but it was still going strong when we got there. And it is impressive. Even more impressive, a bison walked over just then and stood in front of it, as if posing.

Then we walked back over to the inn and found Teen A, who had also seen Old Faithful erupt, and we got back in the car and started driving again. And I said to Rocket Boy, I think we need to just head for the hotel (56 miles north). We've done our big thing for today -- this is enough. So we skipped the Grand Prismatic Spring, which I had really wanted to see, and the Norris Geyser Basin -- but you know, it just means we have lots of things to see the next time we come.

Anyway, it took Nine Million Hours to get to our hotel in Gardiner, Montana, so we really couldn't have stopped anywhere else. The old road to Gardiner had apparently been washed out (along with access to the Boiling River hot springs, which we had hoped to visit), but there was another, very winding one that we took. We saw some mule deer along the way, and other people stopped and took pictures of the mule deer, which we thought was funny. (In Colorado, when you see a deer, you worry that it's going to jump out in front of your car, you don't stop and take a photo of it.) This pic shows the Roosevelt Arch, which is supposed to be the Gateway to Yellowstone (back when the North Entrance was the main one).

The Gardiner hotel was a little strange. It was called the Cowboy's Lodge and Grill, and it was basically a restaurant with some rooms behind it. We had an apartment with two bedrooms, which was nice, but there was only one bathroom and it was down a long, steep flight of stairs. We tried to go out to eat, but the only restaurant in town that sounded good (the Wonderland Cafe) was full: we arrived an hour before closing, but the rather harried host told me that they had exactly enough people on the waiting list to fill that hour, so he turned us away. 

And at that point, I snapped. I was tired, hot, stiff and sore from our walk, cross that the bathroom was downstairs, and then this dumb thing with the restaurant. I said, I'm not going out, and Teen A felt the same. So Rocket Boy and Teen B found a cafe next to a gas station where they could get a grilled cheese, and I took a shower and climbed into bed. 

And then things got better. From the window in our room I could see the mountains and the river -- and it was nice. And it stayed light very late, because of course we were so far north, in Montana. I slept better that night than I have in months. A deep, refreshing sleep. I woke up feeling great, not hungover like I so often do at home. I don't know what it was -- the altitude was the same as Boulder's. Maybe the exercise? The soft bed? It seemed funny that I would sleep the best in the hotel I liked the least, but you never know.

Of course, the hotel didn't offer free breakfast and the Wonderland Cafe had a sign up saying "No Breakfast." Of course. So we ate at the restaurant attached to our hotel. They had an extremely meat-based menu, as befitted a cowboy-themed diner, but they did have a yogurt and granola parfait, which both of the twins ordered, and you could get scrambled eggs and a biscuit off the "sides" menu, which Rocket Boy and I both had. It was fine.

Then we drove back into the park. Right near the North Entrance is Mammoth Hot Springs and the Travertine Terraces, which Rocket Boy had particularly wanted to visit, so we spent a lot of time there. It is a totally cool place.

We were early enough to snag a great parking place, but as we walked toward the terraces, it started to rain. The kids wanted to go back to the car, Rocket Boy suggested we go back and get umbrellas, but I said, oh who cares about a little rain. And I turned out to be right. We got a little wet, but then it stopped and the sun came out and we dried out.

I walked on some of the boardwalks, but I was getting tired, so I didn't take the one that led to the top. I missed out on some good wildlife by doing that -- RB found a gopher snake at least three feet long! He said all the other people were just walking past it, not seeing it.

After this we walked over to the Mammoth Terrace Grill and had lunch (the Mammoth Hotel dining room hasn't opened for the season yet). Everywhere we ate on this trip was out of important items, but this place was the worst. All they had was "hoagies": ham & cheese, roast beef & cheese, or veggie. The kids and I had ham & cheese, and RB had veggie. 

Then we got back in the car and started driving east, followed by south. All we needed to do that day was get to our hotel in Dubois, Wyoming, before 8 pm, but it wasn't easy. About 180 miles, much of it covered at, oh, 15 mph? First there were the people stopping for wildlife. Twice, people were stopped for bears! The one thing I'd really wanted to see in Yellowstone and we saw three of them! So that was cool.

Then there were the sights! Even on the east side of the park, away from Old Faithful and all that, there are so many things to see, it's exhausting. We stopped at Tower Fall and took the short walk to see the waterfall, which was very dramatic. Then I drove around a loop where you could see bits of the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Then we stopped at the Mud Volcano, because Rocket Boy said it was worth seeing. Boy, was he right about that. So interesting. My favorite was this one, the Dragon's Mouth.

It was like a buffet, where you want to try everything but you know you'll get sick if you do. Or like an amusement park, where you want to go on every ride. I can't think of anything I've done before that compares to Yellowstone. Oh, and there were magpies everywhere. Heaven.

That said, I don't think I want to go back right away. I prefer more peaceful (less crowded) places. But it was amazing.

We finally made it to Dubois, after a lot more gorgeous scenery. To get there we had to drive through a little bit of Grand Teton National Park, and THAT looked amazing too. Huge, stark, snow-capped mountains rising up above a beautiful lake. At one point I thought we might stay an extra day and visit that park too. But the boys were tired and so were their parents.

In Dubois, we stayed at the Twin Pines Lodge & Cabins, where we had two rooms joined by a bathroom in the middle. That turned out not to be the best arrangement. With four adults/teens, someone always needed to be using the bathroom (with the doors closed), and it was disruptive to have it in the middle of the rooms. Also, the beds were not as comfortable as in the other two hotels, and the curtains were thin, and light came under the door, and we were woken up early in the morning by people having coffee and talking loudly in the lobby down below us. Still, it was a quaint hotel and it had a nice feel to it. If we went there again, we would try to stay in one of the cabins out back.

We also lucked out on restaurants -- the Cowboy Cafe down the street had excellent food and we bought a whole peach pie to take home to Boulder with us. We also went there for breakfast Friday morning. (Teen B said to me, "Why is everything called the Cowboy something out here?" I said, "Well, it's Wyoming.")

Friday we had the long drive back to Boulder, but the first few hours were lovely. Wyoming is beautiful at this time of year, so green and big and wild and open. Later, I got tired and we couldn't find a place to eat, and we ended up having a lunch/dinner at the horrible Iron Skillet truck stop restaurant in Laramie, and it rained, and we got lost coming back on 287 because of the stupid roundabouts and yeah. Driving home is never as much fun.

But we made it. It's funny -- Boulder is such a gorgeous place to live, I almost laughed as we came into town. Boulder is where other people come to visit, when they want to get away from the ugly cities where they live. Boulder also looks a lot like Wyoming. The only real difference is that there are a lot more people here. And, of course, it's blue, and getting bluer all the time. I know right now Wyoming is redder than red, but I wonder how long that will last. If I couldn't afford housing in Boulder, I'd think about Dubois or Lander or Laramie or Cheyenne. Hmm.

***

Well, now we have the month of July. Rocket Boy will be with us for probably five more days -- I think he'll leave to drive back to St. Louis next Saturday. Such a short visit, really, and we won't see him again until September. 

I have a long, long honey-do list for him, so maybe we can check off some of that stuff before he goes. He'll also drive with the twins as much as he can. We'll probably do a barbecue on the 4th (Tuesday) and maybe eat out on my 63rd birthday (Wednesday). The week will go fast. 

The photo shows our two cats looking at fledgling crows on the porch roof. Sillers in particular adores those crows -- we call one of them Sillers' boyfriend.

I don't like July as much as I love May and June. But it's still a good month. We'll do lots of practice driving, eat lots of fruit and ice cream, take lots of long walks. It'll be good.