Dream Jurney Day 6

Chris left his headphones at The Dancing Bear Inn, an absurd karmic response to his heroic haggling. So instead of a river of high definition white noise pumping into his mind all night, he used my geriatric ear buds that last about three hours before they need a recharge. While I snoozed, he was awake, drowning in the ocean of my super manly snoring.

The plan was for me to drive again all day so Chris could be photography princess. Two hours outside Yellowstone, the sun rose through the rainy morning and gave us another indescribable sunrise. It lasted about three minutes before the rain clouds took back the skies. When we arrived in West Yellowstone, the tourist town was already in full swing and we were so hungry.

With a warm breakfast and bad coffee in our tummies from another bear-themed breakfast place, we took off down Hwy 20 into Yellowstone. Something about the cold and rain stirred my innards and I started waxing about the depression that had plagued me over the last 38 years. I had a flair up for the last three months from the unfairness of life and how little control I have over that. Chris talked me through my thoughts and now I owe him $60 for therapy.

To add a cinematic environment to my suffering display, we stopped the car to stand in the cold rain and brood. I tried to embody the pose of sad poetry, and Chris relieved himself down at the lake. As he turned around to hike back up the rocks, he stopped – deep in thought. There on the bank, with its weathered roots reaching up to embrace him, was the Perfect Wood. A water worn stump stripped of its bark, carried downstream out of the mountains for Chris to find, pack in the car, and take back to St. Louis.

A huge herd of elk strutted through an open field, the bulls keeping safe distance from one another while the cows ate grass. One cow chewed thoughtfully on the carcass of an unidentifiable varmint. A bone danced up and down from her blank chewing face.

I had been to Yellowstone two times before, and Chris had never been. There were still parts of the park I had never seen, like Lamar Valley, Mount Washburn, and basically anything north of the Caldera. Yellowstone is big. Like very big.

On the way to Mammoth Hot Springs, there was a pull off with a sign reading “Moose Habitat”. We had seen so much wildlife already, we just knew there’d be a Bull Moose waiting on us. But after traipsing through the rough, we were met with dashed hopes and cool obsidian rocks. But the bull moose eluded our search.

I bought the kids some goodies at the gift shop at Mammoth, open in spite of the shutdown. Bathrooms were shut up tight because flushing the toilet doesn’t make the government any money.

When we got service we did a quick search to find the best places to see bears in the park. Results told us the best place to find wildlife is where long lines of cars are pulled over on the shoulder. Not ten seconds after Chris read that, we ran into a gridlocked stretch of park road. Some older ladies were sitting in their comfortable chairs with binoculars staring down into the valley where a black bear roamed the field. Other’s crowded around them up and down the shoulder. Up from the bear, on a small plateau, a herd of buffalo stampeded, kicking up dust, their wild sounds barely audible above the chattering crowd and idling cars. We basked in the strange estuary of wilderness and tourism.

Lamar Valley is a long stretch of rolling hills, green grass, and sparse pines. According to other results, this was the place to see bears and wolves if we were lucky. On a gravel road we headed north into Slough Creek Trail and were inundated with thousands of buffalo; so many that taking pictures didn’t seem important anymore. Pronghorns napped in the distance, specks to the naked eye, while a car careened past, necks craning through the tinted window to see wildlife, but not stopping to actually look for it. Quiet descended on our clicking cameras.

Afternoon crashed toward evening. Chris had never seen Old Faithful, so we decide to head there before leaving. It was on the exact opposite side of the park and it all depended on traffic. Out of the Slough we came to a halt at the main road intersection where a woman from a fashion magazine directed traffic in her tight construction zone outfit. She waved at me to go ahead and turn, but it was actually the truck loaded with dirt behind me. She gave me an angry yell and shook her disappointed head at me.

We waited for forty five minutes.

When Blue Collar Bjork finally let us go, we crawled southward toward the geyser. Gorgeous landscapes consumed us and spit us out over and over, buffalo around every curve, cars either tailing us or slowing us. On Mount Washburn we found another line of parked cars on the shoulder. A huge grizzly huffed and puffed two hundred and fifty feet down in the small ravine. The chances of making it to Old Faithful before sun down were slimming. But a grizzly!

All sorts of people stopped to ogle the bear. He wandered up and down the hill, in and out of washes, hiding, and reappearing. Some people looked at where a bear should be, saw nothing, and got back into their car ready to move on to the next thing, impatient to be entertained. Others stayed out, passing scopes and binoculars around like a community wine jug. Eventually the bear had halved the distance between us and then disappeared for a long time. We were sad to leave, but did.

At Old Faithful the sun had just set and a small suspicious geysery cloud floated above the basin. A skinny boring man at the viewing area laughed at us and said, “You just missed it!”

Thanks, dude…

Patience will find you at the times you need to rest. We stretched our legs and found a bathroom outside a burger place. We considered eating, but figured we could grab something after the show. I called my son and we sat on a picnic table drinking one of the IPAs from the motel room, hot from sitting in the back floorboard next to the heater. Chris tried some double exposure shots on his camera. We found ourselves chatting on the bench in the viewing area, waiting in the cold. Elk bugled in the quiet dark of Wyoming, a haunting sound on the moist air.

Old Faithful was late. Every few minutes, the water bubbled to the top, raising our hopes then shattering them to millions of disappointed pieces. More like Unfaithful. The only other people in the basin with us were a small family on the other side of the geyser and the moron in his car who left his high beams on while in the parking lot.

Night fully descended, the car left, the family quieted, and the geyser erupted. In the dark, water spewed a steamy specter skyward. Stars burned holes into the background as the fuzzy sound of high pressure water filled our senses. Sulfur fumes warmed our hearts as anticipation finally paid off. While walking to the Prius, the forest paid us one more piercing bugle.

We were starving and the burger place had closed. Depressed, I moaned and forced another granola bar past my teeth. With 76 miles left in the gas tank we had no clue where to find gas at this hour. After driving past the entirety of Jackson Lake, we accepted our fate and slept in the parking lot of a closed gas station, the pumps turned off for the season.