Yellowstone

I have wanted to visit Yellowstone for years, and since the Boyle farm is just a few hours away from it we decided to take a day trip there.

It was cool to see wild buffalo up close (but not TOO close).

Joy thought it was fun to wade barefoot in a stream near a hot spring.

My favorite area of the trip was the Fountain Paint Pot Trail. It had all the things I associate with Yellowstone:

Colorful springs . . .

. . . bubbling mud pots . . .

. . . and of course, geysers. As we walked past this geyser, its egg-scented* steam wafted over us. The steam had cooled by the time it reached our walkway, but it was still a little unsettling to be surrounded by vapors that had just erupted out of the Earth.

Speaking of geysers, we figured no trip to Yellowstone would be complete without a visit to Old Faithful. As we approached the geyser, I asked a ranger when the next eruption might be. "Oh, about 2:04pm," he replied, "but you ought to be there ten minutes early just in case." Old Faithful was punctual this afternoon--at 2:04pm it shot tons of water and steam over 100 feet into the air. The spectacle was impressive, but I was most struck by the fact that its massive eruptions can be so accurately predicted.

* The egg smell comes from the sulfur in the steam. Apparently eggs have sulfur in them, too, which is why geysers smell like scrambled eggs (and vice versa).