Hey Boo-boo! Jellystone Park...

Wednesday July 19

We were woken by the park ranger to collect our fees. He also provided information that I’m frankly very glad that we didn’t learn the night before. Apparently, this is the first time in 20 years that they had been allowing tent camping due to the heavy bear activity. He told nice, creepy stories of tent campers being mauled by bears, and gave a detailed account of the three bears that he knows have been active in the area (one broke into someone’s garage a few miles away). Lovely. We packed up quickly and headed out in the Snaab (which a bear could open like a tin can, by the way).

Sir Guano stands, unmauled.

Our national parks passport ruled: we rolled to Yellowstone in the high season with the $25 fee waived and proceeded to ‘car sightsee’, very ‘Merican. We made our way slowly amongst the caravan of cars toward Old Faithful and managed to be rightly astounded by the landscape the entire way. Little mini-geysers, pristine meadows and crystal clear streams occasionally dotted with picturesque fly-fishermen. Wow. Clearly, we could have lingered here for years, but as we were now on our way home and time was running low, we kept to our maxim adopted in Chicago that we could spend cursory time in places to which we KNEW we’d return and thus not feel so bad that we weren’t moving in immediately. We’ll be back.

Straight outta central casting...

Old Faithful blew, and though the setting was beautiful, that is not the reason I will return to Yellowstone. It pretty much looked like it should.

Yup, Old Faithful.

The geyser is right behind us. You think the geezer whom
we asked to take our picture might have thought to include that...

We got back on the road and continued to head for the Northeast entrance. Stopped for lunch at a quiet spot with a view of the lake. Best PBJ with a view since… well, the night before.


The rest of the drive was just stunning and more stunning. Kind of like driving through the desert where Beth and I just got so frustrated, wondering what to do with all of the beauty, always wanting to pull over so we could, do what? Look harder?



Soon we came upon a couple of cars stopped in the middle of the road, which we thought a bit inconsiderate until we saw what they were ogling: a grizzly bear! In the wild, feeding by the side of the road! Yes, we had the top down but we were a safe distance away and on the other side of the road and there were about five other large cars parked between us and the bear so I was aware but not at this point concerned. Beth, as it turns out, felt a bit differently, especially when Kelly got out of the car to get a closer look. Public opinion seems divided on this issue, as Kelly still believes she was being quite safe, but suffice it to say that there is now a turn of phrase used which asks if an idea is ‘just crazy or grizzly bear crazy?’ And, yes, I know they can run 30 mph…

Stephen Col-Bear.

So, both of us managed to leave without being mauled by a bear, thus a successful day. We then headed to Cody, Wyoming, which does have a rodeo every night, but otherwise the main attraction seems to be that it is Cody, WY. I couldn’t quite figure out what it is famous for… fake shootouts staged nightly at 6 pm on a sidestreet? Check. Proximity to Yellowstone? Check, I guess. Chill coffeehouse owned by a guy who likes climbing? Check… but, again, a bit underwhelming and yet still oddly touristy.

As we had entered the hell-for-leather segment of the trip, we resumed our eastward trail through remote Wyoming. This huge state has only 400,000 people, and apparently most of them are selling t-shirts with cowboys on them in Cody. It was sparse out there and created in me this most wonderful sensation. True emptiness… I would love to know what it would be like to live out there, even for a little bit.

We stopped for dinner and gas at Dirty Annie’s and wondered why the cowboy hat wearing locals chewing the fat in rockers on the porch (no exaggeration) were giving us funny looks. So we asked if we were doing something wrong as we went for the gas pump (very retro too… not digital at all and a $2 taped in front of the price window, which only had two digit placeholders!). The reply was “Well, you pull up in a convertible Saab with Massachusetts plates and then you’ve got that LED thing running on your license plate – yeah, we’re lookin’. We’re just a buncha hillbillies”. Okay. But they must be used to this a bit, because I don’t imagine it’s the locals buying all the touristy gift paraphernalia at the massive Dirty Annie’s gift shop. So, some greasy food later and we were back on the highway – determined to wake up in…