Day 11

We got up early again this morning, but stuck around camp and made some delicious french toast for breakfast. Then we started out northwards to see the other side of the park, even though we had heard rumors that OBAMA was going to be in yellowstone, in the area we had seen the previous two days. Our first stop was at artist paint pots, which is a spot filled with muddy geysers and hot springs, which sounds gross, and it kind of is. It’s also fascinating and mesmerizing.

We then went to norris geyser basin to see some more geysers. Many were inactive but we did catch a minor eruption of steamboat geyser which is very cool. Jeff’s camera lense cap fell off the boardwalk (which you are urged not to stray from, as you could fall through the crust of the earth into boiling lava) and immediately like 15 people sprang to our assistance and grabbed sticks to retrieve it. Very helpful.

We then drove to mammoth hot springs, where i started getting a little exhausted. Mammoth is the second most visited area in the park and by this time it was close to noon, and it seemed that most of the earth’s population had descended onto the area. We walked around for a little bit but i think jeff could tell i was a little over it, and so was he. We drove on a little ways, and i proceeded to have a minor freak-out, mostly about being tired of camping and being around too many people. So jeff suggested we leave yellowstone a day early, as we had pretty much seen all the major sights in the park in the first two days. We agreed to camp one more night and then head off towards Zion NP tomorrow.

It was a good call, because the freezing cold weather and the HAIL that fell on us as we got back to our campsite and tried to cook dinner made us very glad that this would be our last night camping. But we made the best of it, jeff made a fire and we had some delicious dougheys and went to bed ridiculously early.

Em.