Old Man's Birthday in Yellowstone

This obviously happened a few weeks ago but I am happily adding this as my first post to enjoy how much I was spoiled on my birthday on July 14th, 2008.
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I went to bed way too early this morning leaving me very little time to sleep (six hours or so) before waking up, wolfing down breakfast, getting the little whipper-snapper ready to go and racing out the door.

We left Rexburg, ID, around 0840 hours and took a short detour just before reaching W. Yellowstone (the west entrance to the national park) and got a few pictures of Caleb (my little boy) at a natural spring off the side of the road. It was awesome to get my feet wet and I got Caleb interested in doing the same. He did his little dance (quickly stepping up and down in place) as soon as he realized how cold the water was but happily took off his other croc too to do it all over again!

We got to Yellowstone and enjoyed the scenery (we took the smaller loop of the park - which took us all day anyway) and stopped about 25 miles in at Old Faithful. We got there about 40 minutes before OF blew her top so we sat and talked while Caleb found some loving soul/stranger to entertain him while we made sure he was okay. He enjoyed that. Shortly after we arrived we saw another geyser about a mile down the hill erupt and spout its water and steam. Man oh man, it was nothing compared to watching OF shoot about sixty some-odd feet into the air. We decided not to hike the two miles to get to Morning Glory (a very beautiful and deathly hot geyser) so I thought I'd post a link to this beautiful piece of nature for all to enjoy: Rainbow effect, Natural, and Bottomless Blue. Afterwards we went to the Old Faithful Inn and roamed for a few minutes til we heard our two year old's bum rumble nearly as loud as the geyser was high. Time to cut back on the apple juice. This next part was the only time during the day that sucked miserably... as in EPIC FAIL!!! We ordered lunch and, as expected, it was quite pricey but what was worse was the fact that the service was snail slow and poor. It took nearly an hour to get my food (after I stood in line waiting like everyone else and then they skipped right over my number). The idiots never gave my ticket to the cooks. The response I got was this: "I'm sorry but we never got your ticket. I don't know what happened. We're gonna have to start from scratch." Needless to say my stomach was louder than my desire to kick some serious butt. I got my food and we moved on.

From there we continued our day long journey and took some scenic pics here and there (I'll post some when I get home at the end of the week) but what was awesome was when Katie, my wife, spotted what she thought was a boulder at first and it turned out to be a bison. He wasn't too far off the road huddled in some trees and enjoying his shade. That made for a wonderful picture. Just on the other side of that we saw two more buffalo meandering down towards the road. Before I crossed the street a park ranger was hollering at some idiot who thought that a national park meant everything was tame. She told him to keep his distance, which he did, and all turned out well. I got a couple of pics of them too.

The next big highlight of the trip was towards the tail end of it. We pulled off at an area called Gibbon Falls to take a picture of it. Its an area where old volcanic lava cooled and settled and has a slight slant down the hill instead of a straight drop where there is about a 100'+ difference in elevation. Looking From Above, Frontal View and Misty Splendor -- Mind you, none of these were taken by me (I'll post mine later) but found these beautiful shots off Google images. The first one is roughly what mine looks like and the only shot I took of it.

On our way out we pulled over to see some adolescent moose (sadly, no giant antlers to enjoy) grazing just off the side of the road. I couldn't pass up that shot either so I took a few of those too to enjoy and remember to return again in the near future.

One last reminder of nature's fury (thankfully nothing happened while we saw what was going on), we drove past that last area about a half mile further and saw plenty more out in the marsh and fields. We happened to see another idiot standing no more than 5' from these lovely creatures and well off the beaten path. He definitely deserved anything he had coming but I personally hope nothing did happen because it seemed he had his son/grandson in tow at just the same distance. Nature is beautiful but I wouldn't dare assume that I could just walk up to the creatures and expect it not to be alarmed!

That was the trip (and the BIG highlights) in a nutshell. I'll have to get some shots posted for everyone to enjoy but I thought I'd post these thoughts while they're fresh so you all could enjoy reading them and I could jog my memory when I start to forget about this wonderful birthday journey.

Oh yeah... the journey home was wonderful too in the dying hours of the sun and seeing a beautiful sunset just as we were pulling into town. We arrived around 2045 making the trip, in full, just a smidge over 12 hours. What a day!