Hello From Old Faithful

(Posting for Monday, June 16th)

Well, the Gray family didn’t cover a lot of miles today, but we are one tired bunch.

We left our groovy 1970’s cabin at the Lake Lodge this morning. We made a quick stop at the gift shop at Lake Hotel to pick up another Christmas ornament, then on to the General Store at Fishing Bridge to grab some breakfast for the kids – cinnamon rolls and Diet Dr. Pepper (yum!). We then made our way on to West Thumb and up to Old Faithful, saying a bittersweet goodbye to the Lake area one last time.

Before descending on Old Faithful, we made a stop at Biscuit Basin, one of the geyser basins in the Old Faithful area. While there, we kept running into a family on the boardwalk through the thermal areas that insisted on getting off of the boardwalk and walking up to each thermal feature for a closer inspection and picture (a big no-no in Yellowstone). Part of me wanted to say something to them about staying on the boardwalk, while another more sinister part of me just hoped I had the camera ready when one of them fell screaming into a thermal feature… As we passed them, we noticed they had a really thick Southern accent. This prompted a discussion among our clan about being a good representative of your family, state and region – and not reinforcing negative stereotypes about Southerners by acting like stupid hicks in public.

We decided to head on to Old Faithful around noon or so. We had already hit Old Faithful once last week when it was so cold and snowing. On our last visit, we had the place to ourselves. On this trip, it took 15 minutes to find a parking spot – ugh! Nothing like warm weather to bring out the crazies… Once we finally found a parking spot and hit the bathroom, we decided to do lunch at the cafeteria at Old Faithful Lodge. The food was pretty good, but the place was overrun by fairly rude international tourists. I’m starting to think it would be a good idea to have at least one month in the summer when only native English speakers are allowed in Yellowstone. Not to discriminate, the English only rule would apply to both visitors and employees…

Anyway, the temps were up in the high 70’s, and there were way too many people here. After lunch, we wandered over to Old Faithful Inn to kill some time. We got lucky, and our room at Old Faithful Inn was ready around 1:30pm or so. We went ahead and checked in, and crashed in our room for a while to seek refuge from the heat and obnoxious tourists. After a little R&R, we headed out and walked most of the trails around Old Faithful. After a couple of hours of touring thermal features, the kids hit the wall and everything started to look the same, so we headed back to Old Faithful Inn to grab some ice cream. We picked up our ice cream and headed upstairs to the deck outside the hotel and watched another eruption of Old Faithful – pretty cool indeed.

We had a couple of hours before dinner, so we decided to slip off for a last little bit of fishing. We spent about 30 minutes fishing with flies and bubbles in the Nez Perce creek. I didn’t have much luck – couple of strikes at my bubble. Taylor threw her final cast, and as we watched the bubble float in the current, something large struck her fly, and the bubble quickly disappeared and bent her rod tip. Taylor tugged and reeled with all her might, but the monster snapped her line just as she began to fight him to the shore. We never caught sight of the monster, but I’m sure he was a beast. Taylor was so proud to have hooked and fought with such a beast!

After our fishing episode, we headed back to the Old Faithful Inn to clean up for dinner. Dinner in the main dining room was neat – a great experience (though a little hot and stuffy). Trey was so tired at dinner that I thought he might fall asleep at the table. We made it through dinner and a hot shower before heading off to bed.

In the morning, we’re leaving Yellowstone and heading south to float the Snake River in Grand Teton. We’d originally planned to stay in Yellowstone a couple of more days, but the Gray clan hears to the open road calling, so we’re doing to start working our way south to Zion, Bryce Canyon, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and many other points in between. If we spent an entire summer in Yellowstone, we wouldn’t have time to do everything we would want to do. Yes, there are trails we didn’t get to hike, geysers we didn’t see, and fish that weren’t caught. I guess that is what keeps you longing to come back next time.

We’ve got a great room here at Old Faithful Inn, and I hear the comfy bed calling my name. If you ever get the chance, stay here. The hotel really is amazing – unlike any other place in the world.

We have a ton of pics to upload when we get back to civilization. Hopefully we can upload them from our next hotel in Utah (if you can call that civilization).

The Grays