Epic Roadtrip Journal: 6/14/11 Yellowstone National Park

The day started fairly cloudy, so I opted to continue sleeping rather than try for sunrise. We woke up and had a quick breakfast (everything we owned was still sopping wet, so we just dealt with it), and started our day of adventures at about 8am. (We pack so much into each day that at this point in the trip it is just starting to be a grind writing in the journal. I was just jotting down what happened just to have it written down so I could go to sleep sooner. WHAT A BABY.)
We drove around towards Prismatic Spring (for the life of me I can never remember that fucking name), stopping at a bunch of places along the way. A lot of geothermal sites, including a few with hot, bubbling mud. I felt like I was in some prehistoric time, and there probably should be dinosaurs walking around all over the place. It was odd that there weren't, so I learned to be happy with just the bubbling mud. Oh, it was the Artist Paintpot area. I'm good at remembering things. We then went to the Fountain Paintpot, where Nadkarni decided to throw litter into the scalding, growing bacteria that form the beautiful red colorful terraces (she accidentally dropped her trail map, but that didn't stop me from giving her shit for it). The geysers, bubbling mud pits, and fumaroles were awesome. One was called Spastic or Spazzing Geyser, I don't know the actual name, but I know that it was apt as SHIT because the geyser was spritzing out water in crazy directions.
We then made it to the Prismatic Spring area. It is a huge, intensely colored pool that Yellowstone is well known for. Seeing it on it's horizontal axis is interesting, because there is a lot of steam coming off (into us, so pictures were basically impossible), and the steam is colored the blue and orange of the actual spring.
After a quick PB+J AND buffalo jerky lunch, Alex, Scott and I started our nearby hike to Fairy Falls. We saw a lone buffalo close by right at the trail head, which I promptly threatened and warned that I was eating it's brethren in jerky form. The hike was really nice: perfect weather through a forest of young, super-green trees (that's a color, right?). The falls were great: about a 200 foot fall where I proceeded to climb up to the base and dance around in the mist. Refreshing AND dangerous - perfect combination.

I'm not sure who invented waterfalls, but you, sir, are a genius

We hiked back and up a hill to get a higher elevation view of the Prismatic Spring. Without exaggeration, it was in the top 5 most beautiful views I've ever experienced. The colors were so vivid and amazing. I had a hard time believing it wasn't a photoshopped poster someone had put in front of me. The bright blue and orange were beyond words... so I'll stop now.

The photos look like absolute shit compared to the real thing. It was mind-blowingly amazing.

We then drove around the southern side of the park toward Yellowstone Lake. There, we stopped at some lookouts we hadn't seen before and basically rocked out to some music and a picturesque drive (but seriously, those two CDs were starting to get pretty old).
Alex, Scott and I took a short hike near the "Lake Thumb" - it was an insane view of the lake and surrounding mountains. We also trudged through snow to see a couple elks REALLY close up. About 15 feet away. They are enormous. I don't understand how these animals are not afraid of us. I mean, I could literally walk up to it, pull a gun out, and shoot it's face off. These things have some serious balls.

"Holy crap he just looked at me!"

But we left the immense valley to continue our drive back to camp, along the gorgeous lake. We saw a HUGE Grizzly bear on the other side of the Yellowstone River. It was immense. I saw it swim partway across the river to an island, hoping against hope that it would come at me and we'd be able to battle, but alas, not this time.
We just finished a foil dinner - ground beef, carrots, and potatoes in foil pouches on a fire. Pretty damn good. I'm amazed I was able to get the fire going with wet wood right next to the snow bank though.
We just got back from our excursion from the Grand Canyon, just near our campground. We saw a bit of sunset at Artist's Point on the south rim (after a fiasco of trying to see it from the north rim, but facing the wrong way). Without fog, the canyon is JUST LOVELY. We saw the sky and clouds change to purple, orange, and red colors as the full moon came up. It was a pretty great evening.
Some notes about Yellowstone in general: unlike other hikes or parks, like hiking near Boston, Yellowstone isn't a monotonous hike with interspersed "holy crap this is an amazing view" locations. Yellowstone, every single moment of it, is "fuuuuuuuuuck this is beautiful and green and amazing and gorgeous and pretty and gorgeous again! I need to look up more synonyms for gorgeous!" Everything, every moment driving, every step while hiking, is just amazing. The smell of the trees, the views, the animals, they all make me think I need to reevaluate my life because the best I have to compare is a grey, overcast drive to shitty Lynn, MA for work every morning. I WANT GRIZZLY BEARS IN MY OFFICE.
Also, we've been doing thorns and roses for each day, and Alex and I had an epiphany together when we decided our overarching "thorn" for the canyon campsite would be "fucking freezing water in the sink." Seriously. The thing I dread the most each day is washing my hands in frigid ice-water.
Due to the fact that I am terrible at remembering things, I just thought of this. Earlier, while driving, we saw a coyote just hanging out in a field. He was waiting above a Pikachu hole (small rodent called a Pika, so I just took the next step in naming it Pikachu). Maybe he got one?

This guy is SO INTENSE

Also, whenever Alex yawns, we all lose "the game." It is terrible. He just learned about The Game, and now we all have associated yawning with The Game. Shit.

Epic Roadtrip Journal: 6/12/11 Grand Tetons/Yellowstone National Parks

Writing from Grand Tetons:
It rained all night, and it is still drizzling now, and my fingers are numb writing this, but who gives a fuck; I'm in one of the most beautiful places in the world (sweet attitude brah!). No stargazing, sunset, or sunrise due to cloud cover, but it honestly doesn't matter. I passed out right when I got in the tent last night. I barely made it into my sleeping bag.
This morning, I got up before everyone else and walked down to the lake (Jenny Lake, where we camped at). It was preposterously amazing, even with clouds covering the mountains. Shit's getting tranquil up in here. Then I saw another moose. Holy shit. I was, I kid you not, about 10 feet away from it. No exaggeration. I took some amazing pictures (including one of myself on a timer), stalked it a bit, and then went to have a bagel-y breakfast.

Am I doing it right?

Writing from Yellowstone:
After breakfast, Scott, Alex, and I went for a short hike around String Lake toward Paintbrush Canyon. It was a really pleasant hike made better by the fact that we didn't see another person the entire time. The mountains were covered by clouds, but the awesome pine trees and snow covered mountain slopes were still gorgeous. Stomping through virgin snow in the middle of June is probably one of the top things you can do in life. We got to a mini hill, where Scott suggested we trail blaze up the hillside. Alex then had the incredible idea to sled down on our asses. It was I who recommended we do it again. It was a blast, even if our asses got soaking wet. Then we ran/slid down the snowy slopes and made it back to camp pretty quickly.

Soaking wet pants are TOTALLY worth it

After breaking down the tent, we drove to the Colter Bay area for a quick, easy little hike by Jackson Lake. It was a nice way to say our goodbyes to the Grand Tetons. We then drove along the Rockefeller Parkway into Yellowstone. There was a crapload of snow and everything was beautiful. Yep, that's how I'd sum up the entire park so far. We crossed the Continental Divide (where water flow changes direction from one side of the continent to the other) like 3 times and drove the zig-zag mountainous road through a lot of the southern portion of the park. I probably had about 10 mini freakout sessions due to everything being so epic.
Our first main stop was Old Faithful, which is a geyser (no shit) that goes off every 90-130 minutes or something. Whatever, I'm not a stopwatch. Our timing was incredibly fortuitous, because it blew it's load RIGHT AS WE ARRIVED. Perfect timing. It was a really fantastic sight to behold: boiling water launched up about 130 feet. We then took a long walk around a lot of the other geysers, hot springs, and other geothermal sites. Oh wait, that's the ENTIRE PARK. Everywhere you drive there is sulfur-y, acrid, smelly steam coming off the ground, or some thermal vent or hot spring. It is unbelievable. Anyway, we saw about 20 geysers, including Beehive Geyser, which is WAY better than Old Faithful. The blast is actually taller and you can stand way closer. The nozzle is also smaller, so the water rockets out of the opening like it's on crack or something (I'm pretty sure that's not possible). It only goes off once or twice in a day, so we were super lucky to be there. Granted, my warm weather clothes got soaking wet with boiling sulfur-water (I took them off when it got warmer out, and when the geyser went off, it shifted directions and sprayed Nads, Scott, and Alex, who forgot that my shirts were right next to them in their insane panic to get away from the steam), but hopefully they will dry by tomorrow morning... (spoiler alert: they didn't.)

We also saw 6 or 7 buffalo RIGHT NEXT TO the walkway, so close that I could literally touch them if I wanted, and they didn't give a shit about ANYTHING. There were 3 tiny baby bison with them, and they were adorbs.
Scott and I ran to a lookout (literally ran) that overlooked the entire geothermal area, which was a really interesting perspective. We came down, saw a few more geysers (oh, at this point I'm apparently underwhelmed by the FANTASTIC MAJESTY THAT IS A GEOTHERMAL EVENT), saw Old Faithful go off again,and then saw the CUTEST black and brown puppy that I have ever seen in my entire life. Without superlative, that puppy was the best. So yeah - saw Old Faithful go off 3 times from different angles, saw a buffalo family, saw a shitload of geysers, saw the cutest puppy in the history of the Universe: great stop at Old Faithful Village.
We then drove to Canyon Village, where we are currently camping. We stopped at a few notable views, were amazed by the green awesome trees (LOOK AT ALL THE GWEEEEEN), and rocked out to Queen whilst driving some fun roads. But the best was having a HERD of buffalo cross the street all around our car. There were probably 60-70 bison. They stopped traffic for about 45 minutes, but it was absolutely worth it. I got great pictures and it was a quintessential Yellowstone adventure. Some of them were fucking enormous. I think my adrenaline was going nonstop (however, my adrenaline going nonstop is not an abnormal event).

We kept yelling at the buffalo from the car: "CROSS IN FRONT OF US, WE WANT TO LOOK AT YOU."

We then had to deal with some incompetent, over 60-year-old campground people at our campsite, but after an hour-long fiasco of changing our snow-covered site to a site where we could AT LEAST set up our tent on the pavement next to the road (there was also an unnecessary amount of highlighting on our site map by the campground guy who didn't know how to use a computer). (WOW. I really toned down the intense frustration here. Dealing with those people was seriously the worst. In fact, I literally just filled out a survey for customer satisfaction. I gave them the worst possible score in every category. WE COULDN'T EVEN FIND OUR FIREPIT in the 3 feet of snow that covered our campsite). It is a shitty location, but at least our tent isn't DIRECTLY on snow. There is seriously about 2-3 feet of snow everywhere; I think it might be a cold stay...

One benefit to having a wall of snow around our picnic table is that we have a place to keep the beer cold

We had noms at the Canyon Village Lodge, where I had some Wyoming beer and Bison ravioli. Pretty damn good. Now I'm lying on pavement in our tent, freezing cold, starting to smell, and super tired and dirty - it was a great day.
Some notable moments were when Nadkarns coined the term "Hagstag," a clever play on the twatter phrase hashtag. I rofl'd. Another is when we had just left our snow covered campsite for dinner. We had just finished eating and Alex goes "should we buy some more ice?" (Nadkarns needs ice for cooling her newly healing knee). I simply responded "shut up," assuming he was being a jackass talking about how COMPLETELY COVERED our campsite is with snow. He apparently had forgotten. I hadn't.