Collections and traditions

For those of you who know me well, you already know that I'm most comfortable in tee-shirts and shorts, unless it's the winter months and then it's tee-shirts and pants. Not really much difference, but at least it keeps my legs warm.

Anyway, most, if not all of my tee-shirts are ones that I've purchased when I travel. I started this way back in high school when the family would camp in Yosemite National Park almost every summer. And every time I was there, I would purchase a Go Climb a Rock tee-shirt. It sort of became a thing for a while there and I had a Go Climb a Street shirt that I bought in San Francisco and a Go Climb a Volcano shirt that I purchased in Lassen Volcanic National Park. I even had a gag tee-shirt that a friend of mine purchased for me that said Go Climb Mt. Fuji.  

After high school, I tended to drift away from the Climb shirts and just purchased ones that I liked. Most of these tee-shirts center around the national park experiences, but there's also novelty tee-shirts that some of my family and friends have purchased for me. So what does this have to do with anything?

Well, when I'm out and about I tend to wear a tee-shirt that fits the theme of the day.  If I'm geocaching, then of course, the likelihood is I'll be wearing a geocaching tee-shirt.  If I'm camping, more than likely, I'll be wearing a national park shirt. Family visits usually mean I'm wearing a shirt given to me by one of my kids.  You get the idea now.

After looking over some of my more recents shots I took at several national parks, it seems like I have a "Go to" shirt for when I enter a national park and get my photo taken at the entrance sign of said national park. I'm wondering if it's my subconscious telling me that I have to wear my Yellowstone National Park tee-shirt every time I enter a national park, or if it's just a coincidence? It's probably the latter, but no matter what, since this has become sort of a tradition, I obviously will be wearing that tee-shirt on my next excursion out into a national park, or at least when I get my photo taken at the entry point sign. And of course, because I noticed this, I'm going to either have to get back to Yellowstone to get a couple more tee-shirts, or order some on-line so I have a ready supply for future trips.

Yellowstone

This is the 3rd of a series of semi-regular articles chronicling the 2017 road trip my youngest and I took to Wisconsin and back again.  This is something that, after you read this, think to yourself, "don't do Yellowstone in just one day."

The first time I visited Yellowstone National Park, I think I was 12 or 13 and we spent at least a week there.  The second time, I was newly married and my wife and I spent 3 days.  This time around, my youngest and I spent just a day in the park, driving in from Idaho, then driving back out later that evening at dusk.  There is no way, that's nearly enough time for anything, but we packed as much as we could into the day, hiking, sightseeing and geocaching.

We came in through the West Yellowstone entrance and then headed toward the geyser basins.  The first major stop was at the Grand Prismatic Spring seen in the first shot.  This alone is worth a partial day visit.  I wish there was a way I could convey the colors, the smells and everything about this, but I just can't.  This photo is close, but I don't think it does it justice.  And we didn't even get around to the other side.  There's a trail on the hillside that gets you at elevation above the spring so you can see how truly grand it is and how large it is.  That, in and of itself, gives me another reason to go back and spend more time there. It's the largest hot spring in the United States and third largest in the world.  It measures 370 feet in diameter and is 160 feet deep.

After the spring, it was on to the Old Faithful area.  All I can say is check the geyser schedule somewhere ahead of time. We got there at noon, about 10 minutes before eruption and it took us 15 minutes to find a parking spot.  Because we were day tripping in the park, we didn't really have a choice as to when we were going to be there.  Needless to say, we didn't see it erupt that time, but watched it erupt twice more that afternoon, once by the seating areas and once from a trail.  The second time, it was erupting while Beehive geyser was also erupting.  That's pretty spectacular to see two different geysers fairly close to each other erupting at the same time.

The rest of the afternoon, we spent hiking here and there among the geysers, taking in the sights, doing virtual and earth caches.  Earth caches and virtual caches are geocaches that don't have a physical container.  Virtual caches usually take you to a specific place of scenic or cultural beauty and you have to answer a specific question about the spot, or post a photo of you at the spot to prove that you were there.  Earth caches are similar, only the spot is geological in nature and you have to answer geology questions based upon what you see at the spot.  The National Park Service, with a couple of exceptions, doesn't allow physical geocaches in the parks because they view them as litter.  They do allow virtual and earth caches though, so we spent the day doing those.  With all of the stuff we were learning, our brains literally hurt by the end of the day.

While we were there, we watched Old Faithful erupt at around 2:30 or so.  Packed house.  We hiked around some more in the area, then went to nearby restaurant to eat dinner.  Came back out and watched Old Faithful erupt again and could have had our pick of seats in the seating area at that time.  Lesson learned.  If you have time, wait until after dinner to watch Old Faithful erupt.  Most of the crowds have dispersed back to their hotels or campsites and the parking lot has many spaces available.  I don't think it's ever not crowded there, but there were definitely less people later in the evening.  In the summertime, it doesn't really get dark until after nine o'clock, so you have lots of daylight hours in which to work.

After dinner, we drove over the continental divide and drove down to view Yellowstone Lake.  There was another geyser basin right along the lakeshore, so we walked the boardwalks there and enjoyed the peacefulness of the lake.  There were not as many people here, mainly because it was getting later on in the day and as noted above, most people had "gone home" for the day.  After sightseeing lakeside, we hopped back in the Jeep and made our way back through West Yellowstone and into Idaho where we were staying the night. A bison jam slowed us down, but that was pretty cool watching a herd of bison walk across the road in front of us.  At least we weren't going the other way on the road where a bison decided to lay down in the middle of the lane and take a siesta.

Moral of the story is, don't even think about just spending a day there.  I think you need a week, maybe longer to fully enjoy the park.  I know I'm going to be spending some more time there in the future.