Sequels are never as good as the original so keep in mind that this one won’t be as good as the last one which wasn’t that great.
I met more rangers today. Two of them seemed like very nice polite people. It probably helped that in the one case the lady was in a brand new air conditioned visitor center. At any rate I now have a sample that I believe shows that only 50% of park rangers are annoying:
4 rangers
2 annoying
2 OK
out of the group one was a good looking blonde so I will also conclude that 25% of rangers are hot blonds.
We went to the Canyon today via the Dunraven pass. It sounds like something out of Lord of the Rings. Actually it is part of the secret ploy to kill as many tourists as possible. This is another one of those roads that remind you of some sort of perilous video game were the bad guys send RVs from Mordor your way to push you off the edge into oblivion.
I guess the view was cool.
The Canyon area of Yellowstone is a great place to reduce family size if you feel like you have to many kids. Artists point is a beautiful final resting place for annoying little Johnny.
“No you go right ahead and climb on those rocks. It’s totally safe.”
Callie had to yell at Jenna to get off the rocks because, well I guess we like her. She did tell her that if she kept doing it she would probably plummet to her death in which case we would have to “throw some dirt, say a little prayer and visit with flowers each year.”
That would be way annoying because who wants to visit EVERY year.
We were going to go back to Tower and from there make our way back to Gardiner, but like I said that road is designed to kill you so instead we drove over to Norris. On the way over we drove the Virginia Cascade loop which is a stupid loop because you drive it and expect to see something then you drive right past the thing you are supposed to see (the cascades) because it isn’t marked and there is no where to stop. There is even a sign that says “your tax dollars at work.” I better be getting those dollars back my next tax refund.
We dropped by Norris geyser basin where sometimes the dirt gets so hot (200) that you could cook an egg – that’s the scientific measure for damn hot. The entire area is filled with boiling water and stinky sulfur like smells. Its like a sauna in a men’s room. There is a geyser there (steamboat) that erupts at sporadic intervals where sporadic might be once in 50 years. We had to get back to the cabin to cook pizza so we didn’t wait. Other than that the ground was filled with little areas of boiling water. For some reason I thought that was one of the most impressive parts of the park – dirt that can boil water. Sometimes I wonder what the hell is wrong with me.
Jenna is still on her wildlife hunt. On the way back there were critters behind every tree so we tuned her out – that is a crucial life skill. They should teach tuning out kids in high school. I guess they do only it is tuning out parents at that point in your life.
Anyway, Jenna says, “I see a bear.” She actually says it “bewa,” but we are expert translators. We tune that out until Jimmy (bro in law) gets on the radio (aren’t we dorks) and says, “there is a bear back there.”
Like any good tourist we whipped around, blocked traffic and took as many pictures as we could. We noticed some really bad tourists way out in the brush CHASING THE BEAR. I really wish we could have gotten a picture of a bear eating a moron, but alas the bear must have been full.
We stopped at the Golden Gate – so named because of lichen – take that San Francisco. This is a creepy road because they couldn’t cut into the mountain so they built the road on pillars out over the canyon. We stopped because we like to take pictures of interesting places to die. They have replaced this thing three times. That tells you it is a bad place to be when one of the big ones hit. It was actually a good think we stopped because it slowed down our journey and ensured that we didn’t slam into the buffalo that decided the bridge would be much easier than a climb over the mountain. For a long time he stood in front of the lot of us like that guy in front of the tanks at Tieneman Square. After a while the critter felt like his political point had been made, but just to be sure he walked alongside the long stream of cars that had been backed up by his protest. I could have reached out the window and pet the thing. That would be yucky.
You would think that our wildlife quota had been met, but right above Mammoth the grouping of cars said otherwise. Right off the road was a young grizzly bear. He didn’t look like he was going to eat any of the stupid tourists who were wandering around so we moved on. You can see non-tourist eating bears in the zoo anytime.
We got back. Ate our pizza and now it is 1 am again.