More Yellowstone... Montana...
We slept, we ate, we packed up, we broke camp. We drove through Yellowstone Park. We went past a steamy geyser that wasn't on a map, had no signage—anywhere else, it would be a landmark. In Yellowstone, it was nothing special.
We went through an area where, in theory, one can see large numbers of charismatic megafauna. We saw a couple of bison. That's, apparently, below average.
We stopped at the Mud Volcano area. Here were big sulphurous pools. This was our stinkiest muddiest spot. I held my breath in some places to keep from breathing sulphur. This was Driver Jimmy's favorite spot. It was plenty impressive. It was also encouraging to remember that there are things that smell worse than a busful of unwashed backpackers.
We headed over to Yellowstone's Grand Canyon. Here we saw yellow stone.
Some folks on this trip would go on to the real Grand Canyon and other big canyons. Yellowstone's Grand Canyon is less impressive than those. So it's probably a good thing that those folks saw this canyon first, before they were jaded.
We headed over to the Norris Geyser Basin. Of the sites we saw close up, this area had my favorite: the Porcelain Basin. If you like pretty mineral colors, you'd probably like the area behind Old Faithful better. But if you're impressed by large scale, Porcelain Basin had that. A wide expanse of sickly mineral flats dotted with bubbling steamy spots.
While we were here, it always seemed to be on the verge of raining. A few drops would fall. I'd look up, I'd see clouds. Some of those clouds looked rainy. I'd keep looking up, figuring the wind direction. The wind kept shifting.
At the park's north gate lurks a tourst area called Mammoth. It was based around some mineral formations. We were kind of burned out on mineral formations by this point. There was a colorful feature, the Palette. But there were also some chalky white features that seemed puny compared to the grandeur of the Porcelain Basin.
We mostly unwound at the tourist facilities, enjoying showers and prepared food. At a diner, I sat down with Emily, Ruby, and Siobhann. They'd heard news from the outside world: USA troops had pulled out of Iraq. People in the USA government were admitting that the 2003 Iraq Invasion was a mistake. This manifestation of sanity was pretty baffling. (And of course, it wasn't that simple: plenty of Americans were still in Iraq, USA troops were killed in Iraq days later. But overall good news, right?) Siobhann had studied geology; she'd learned how to use the C programming language for scientific computing. But more than crunching data, she liked to look at rocks. She pointed out a fault in the nearby hills. I vaguely remembered things that people had told me about volcanism in the area, but quashed those thoughts pretty quickly.
I sat with Donald and Driver Charlie for a while. They were talking motorcycles. Charlie was partial to bikes from Royal Enfield of India. Much of the machinery is similar to that which has been made for decades. If you're mechanically-minded, you can repair these bikes. You can probably find cheap parts for them—especially if you're in India. Charlie's mechanically-minded. Donald spoke mournfully of a motorcycle he'd been keeping at his daughter's house; she'd traded it in for some needed roof repairs. Bikes are nice, but roofs are nice, too.
We headed out through the park's north gate to a town with a supermarket where we could resupply. We also took some time to winnow down our luggage. We laid out a trap in the supermarket parking lot. We brought out all the luggage that was in our main compartment. Some of this was baggage, but some of it was trash, too. Some of it had started as baggage, but had become trash, broken from being moved so much. I've mentioned before that I wish that I'd brought a "day bag" separate from my backpack. But something I don't regret: I'm glad that I kept my stuff together. It was tempting, when heading out on a hike, to pull non-hike items from my backpack and stuff them, loose, into the overhead racks. When I saw all our stuff laid out on that tarp, I was glad I hadn't left my stuff to rattle around loose up there.
We got our stuff together, repacked.
I'm not one of those people who seriously keeps track of which 50 states he's visited but nevertheless: Montana, check.
We slept on the bus as it barreled down to Utah.
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