Last week, we went off on a four-day jaunt to Yellowstone NP, my third trip to one of the most majestictableaus onto which I’ve painted some eye-popping adventures over the last fifteen years. Sparkling weather, running down my windshield, an inauspicious beginning to our six-hour drive. Pit stop #1: Idaho State University, where my daughter, Allison, and the daughter of our friends, Misty, took a zoom-zoom eyes-wide-open tour of the campus. We now have two ISU die-hards – and all because I threw them a curve ball that they couldn’t refuse, so try that tactic yourself.
Yellowstone is what it was and always should be – vast, unsullied and superbly layered with more than the five senses can absorb. Just driving into the park, we gleaned views of pine forests grandly regrowing after the fires of ’88 that laid low fully one-third of it. Fires – devastating but necessary for a healthy forest. So we saw thousands of acres of carpeted hillsides and dreamt of what was tooling around unseen.
Ever “wing it” on a campsite, deciding not to reserve it? Just say No if that’s at a busy national park. My good luck carried the day at our second campsite try, though, and we got a nice spot with just three first-come slots left. And, we squeezed in a leisurely stroll through half of Norris Geyser Basin to kick off the weekend. Sweet…
Dinner: Sandwiches. We’re too pooped to care what goes into the gullet…
Smithsonian Article du Jour: Zombie Pigeons Are Invading Moscow
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