Dear Friends and Family,
Haha yeaaaaah I really messed up on my end-of-travel blogging plans 🙂
Before we return to our regularly scheduled blogging, I wanted to note that the trip concluded on September 6th, 2023. I covered 24,840.2 miles, took 17,000 photos, spent 142 days on the road, crossed 28 states, visited 18 national parks, replaced 4 tires, did 3 oil changes, and had 1 birthday. The entirety of the trip resists summation at any point, except in one regard: it is the best thing I have ever done for myself in my entire life. I will blog about how I felt about the trip coming to an end when it comes up chronologically in the blog, but for now I did want you guys to all know that I did eventually make it home 🙂
As for the blog delays, well… I had a lot going on when I returned to Virginia, first with the unpacking and second with the processing of it all and third with seeing all my friends again, finally. Then I had a… difficult situation… come up with my job. It’s messy. Text me if you want the full explanation. But in short, I can finally divulge that I am starting a new job at the Coast Guard come 10 October, and I have several days off between now and then to get the blog up to speed! I’ve kind of given up on maintaining an accurate schedule for these things, so come-what-may, but the blog will ultimately cover all of my travels, no matter how long that takes me to get them updated.
So without further delay, let us return to our tale of continents crossed and maple seeds twisting in the wind, to those halcyon July days:
I left Cat and Glacier for the final time on July 17th and made for Wyoming. It was a long and winding drive down the east side of the northern Rockies there and I didn’t have much time to stop for photos:
I mean, I didn’t have much time, but I didn’t have no time for photos, you know what I mean?
I more or less drove all day to get to my campsite in Grand Teton National Park, which as over 8 hours away. I did cross an interesting mileage marker along the way though:
That’s on the odometer, thank God it’s not on the tripodometer 😉
So I broke camp at Lizard Creek in Grand Teton, which will get its own multi-part series soon enough. With my campsite set up, I finally got to enjoy Yellowstone in the daytime the following day. And it was lovely!
Yellowstone, of course, is best known for its geothermal activity. The park is littered with geysers and cauldrons and bubbling paint pots of mud in all different colors:
No for real, this one is actually called “the Paint Pots”.
One of the more fun things about the various geysers and hotspots are their names, and whether they do or don’t fit. For example:
Yup! That sure is bell-shaped and it sure is blue.
It’s not where I’d be hanging out if I were a bluegill, but yeah, sure, it’s a cone and it’s surrounded by fish!
I mean, it’s a relatively big cone. Not sure relative to what though.
Maybe “Still Spring” is more appropriate?
Not really seeing it. I mean, a lot of them have ledges.
The different upwellings and perturbations only sometimes produce actual springs. Here’s an example where the ground has collapsed due to the geothermal activity, but hasn’t filled up with a spring yet:
I noticed that some trash had fallen into this one from some carless pocket, and I sincerely wondered how you could ever safely clean out these dangerous little cones. Thankfully, a ranger was there to give me the answer:
8-foot pit? Meet 9-foot pole.
Old King Geyser, none the wiser, got deposed by a close advisor.
Black Pool and Abyss Pool seem like they were mistakenly swapped at birth.
Minerals in the water stain the shore on their way down to Yellowstone Lake.
Yes, Yellowstone has much to offer. Here are some more geysers and springs from another area of the park I saw:
Oh yeah.
Oh YEAH it’s churning alright!
Gonna take their word for it on Sour Lake.
Let’s freaking GO now THAT is an aptly named geothermal feature!!! HELL YEAH!!!!!!!
I love the signs you find around the different geothermal areas:
That’s a somewhat overfriendly way to say “stay on the damn path or find yourself skeletonized”.
Now that’s a warning!
What an amazing tableau. I choose to believe that everyone facing the other directions are acutely aware of what’s happening to red-shirt-Jimmy there but have just accepted “ah, damn, guess that kid learned about natural selection the hard way. Shame he’s gotta be wearing those tube socks for all of eternity.”
This bison, or pile of bones that was a bison, didn’t heed the warnings 🙁 This is because bison cannot read.
This one can, though!
I just love this photo and its lighting. He even has a little flower (pine boughs, actually) crown on one horn! He just looks like a 31-year-old queer-aligned nature boy who recently moved from Chicago to Denver because “I dunno, the mountains were just always calling to me, you know? Anyways you got any IPA’s in the fridge?” (Did you all miss this? Did you really, earnestly, miss this writing style? 😉 ).
Here is one of the funnier things I saw during my day in the park:
This is goddamn brilliant. I bet this scheme paid for its hut, its staffing, and its bearspray in a month’s time. God, why did I go into naval architecture? I could have been a millionaire if I’d had this idea.
Birb.
Elk.
A beautiful close to a lovely day. Hey wait is that a-
Holy cow (it is an elk cow, no horns) it’s an actual elk swimming across the Yellowstone River.
It was a lovely little corner of Wyoming 💙
That’s all for now,
Stay well everyone,
Evan 💙