Life In A Caldera

Yellowstone, this park has it all. I arrived late in the afternoon around 2 PM and hadn’t really put much thought into how long I was going to stay. This was complicated matter causing me much stress, there was a hostile in Jackson Hole Wyoming that I wanted to stay at, but depending on how long I decide to stay in Yellow Stone would depend on if I could make the 3 plus hour trek south. Some how I grossly underestimated the shear size of Yellowstone. This park is massive and you can’t see all the good stuff in a couple of hours.

I had picked the crappiest entrance into the park. The east entrance road was under complete over haul and I stuck behind a massive dump truck, that for the next hour would be launching stones at my windshield and kicking up massive amounts of dust for me to breathe. Still I didn’t let this dampen my experience. I took advantage of the slow goings to really take in the park. I was already high up in the mountains so you could see down onto the great Lake Yellowstone.

I could go on and on trying to describe the many wonders Yellowstone has to offer, but there are books you could read about that if you really wanted to know. Instead I will say that I spent the next two days trying to uncover what Yellowstone had to offer me, and I found quite a lot.

Now everyone I talk to has had nothing good to say about old faithful, especially my father. He said “oh its just a little water spout” in a very negative tone. I on the other hand found Old Faithful to be quite impressive, it spewed forth boiling water a good hundred plus feet into the air, and the show lasted well over a minute!

I was a little disappointed, in that the wild life I saw was few and far between, but when I get home I will have to call my car insurance and ask them if they cover buffalo damages! Those giant lumbering beast think they own the road! They wait for unsuspecting tourist to stop and gawk at them all wile they are poised to strike at there vehicles!

The other animal incursion happened late into the almost winter esk night. I hadn’t intended on staying in Yellow Stone the first night, but as it got late I ran out of options. I was tired from driving all day, and the bit of site seeing I did proved very difficult when your 7000 feet above sea level. I don’t know if it was the altitude or if I had allergies, because my eyes were watering and I was having trouble breathing, to the point I had to sit down and take deep breathes. I wanted to just pull over and sleep but there was all these signs about saying you couldn’t. Then again there are signs all over telling you not to do all kinds of stuff. People are so stupid you have to tell them to stay away from wild animals! I found a series of signs that I thought were hilarious and just had to grab pictures of them. Off I went in search of a campsite which, I thought would be free considering you have to pay $20 just to enter the park! Well I was wrong, and the first site I went to wanted $18 which, I thought was a bit steep considering I was going to be sleeping in my car. Wouldn’t you know it, that damn tent would have been real handy about now (doh)! A park ranger lady I talked to informed me that I could go half way around the park, about 60 miles north, to a site that only charged $12. Ok no prob, well not so, because it was now dusk and I was exhausted. I had to drive around all these crazy twist and turns going up a mountain and back down one, over a river and through woods, before making it there. I got there just as the sun passed over the horizon giving me enough time to find a campsite.

It’s interesting how in the mountains when the sun sets the temperature will drop 50 degrees! That day the park was hot, the temperature was well into the upper 80’s, but once that sun went down I prepared for the coldest sleep ever. It dropped, as I would later find out from a park ranger, down to the uppers 30’s! Now I was sleeping in my car and thought “eh, it won’t be that cold”. I even took my sleeping bag out of my trunk for extra protection from the elements, this proved to be the smartest thing I would do on my trip so far. At first it wasn’t so bad; I had my window rolled down a bit to let in the sounds of the great and wonderful Yellowstone. Off in the distance you could hear Bison calls and strange bird noises. I took in it all in and stared up at the treetops and the stars beyond. As I became drowsy and my eyelids began to sag, it seemed for a second that the treetops were making love to one another in the gentle wind. I then dozed off and had the strangest dream.

I don’t know how long I fell asleep for, but when I reawakened, I found my nose to be frozen and massive shivers striking my body into a contorted fetal position. I quickly rolled up my window and dug around in my now liter filled backseat for my other blanket. I pulled it over my head and drifted back to sleep.

My return to slumber was short lived as a loud banging noise could be heard at the campsite next to mine. I was confused all was quiet before, who the hell would be tossing about pots and pans in the middle of the night. So I squinted my eyes and peered into the darkness hoping I would be able to catch a glimpse of who ever was causing the disturbance. It was a vein effort, but it proved fruitful when a fellow camper shed light on the matter. "B B B B B B B B B EEEEEAAAAAR!!!!!!" It seems my fellow camper had forgotten to put his once food filled pots and pans away and left them out; which is odd, because there are signs every five feet telling you not to do precisely this.

Now this is exactly what I was afraid of happening. I like the wilderness but I don’t like the beast that thrive in it. I peeked through my window at this bear in a half sleep half frozen state. The first thing that came into my mind was “hello bear.” It was so cute, yet at the same time scary as all hell! It was probably about fifteen feet away from me, and I didn’t want it coming my way. I sank deep into my seat and used my new found powers of Christ to pray it would go away. I then tossed my blankets over my head in an effort to further hide myself from it. It must have worked because when I woke up in the morning the bear was gone, but the shivers from the night before lingered.