Bison or Buffalo? (part 2 of The Great Trip)

Day 4 - Old Faithful and Mud Pots

July 6th. We went to the Old Faithful area on the first day. Cause that's what you do when you go to Yellowstone: you watch Old Faithful erupt. We hiked up to the overlook and learned that we were terribly ill prepared for the 1/2 mile hike. We brought a stroller up (it ended up being carried much of the way), we all froze cause no one brought sweatshirts and it started raining a little while we were up there, and the misquitos were going crazy and no one had bug spray!! I thought bugs were bad in Ohio in the summer, but Yellowstone has Ohio beat by a LONG shot. Those misquitos were having a great time feasting on us.

Luckily my dad bailed us all out of that one. He had a tiny bottle of bug spray. We used it all up right there and then.

The kids were already exhausted on the way TO Old Faithful:

This is all of us huddling around the kids, trying to keep everyone warm:

Teancom wouldn't huddle, the clingy kid. He had a sweatshirt, though, which was better than most of the kids (and adults) who left their heavier clothes in the car. Miciah was only in a T-shirt.

Highlights of Day 1 include this conversation between Justin, my brother, and Elijah:

"They're not called buffalo, Elijah. They're bison."

"Why are they bison?"

"Because that's their name."

after a pause Elijah returned, "Bison is a funny name for buffalo."

Throughout the park, they used the names interchangably. That's the Park Service, mind you. So, to officially clear things up (because this is my blog and I can do that):

Bison = Buffalo.

Same thing.

Because we had so many people together for this family reunion, we all stockpiled our food. I wish we'd taken a picture of the stockpile. It was impressive! One of the things I brought to share, and specifically for my brother Collin, was fruit snacks. 2 boxes from Sam's Club with 72 packets a piece. Collin asked Teancom (the fruit snack fiend in our family) if he could have some of the fruit snacks and Teancom said, "No. They're mine." ... That just cracked me up. ALL OF THEM? It's like we had a shortage or something.

My favorite thermal features are mud pots. I think they're SO COOL! They're also the stinkiest features, so beware. We stopped at the mud pots on the way back to Canyon. Fortunately for the park, it's been a really wet year. But that meant that the mud pots were super wet and not very ploppy. Very disappointing.

Miciah and Dea in front of a mud pot. Mud Caldron, I think:

There was a ranger there, though, who was fantastic. We learned some great things about the mud pots area. We didn't plan to be there when the ranger was, but it was a treat.

Miciah in front of Churning Caldron:

Oh! Another highlight of the day: Elijah got to go pee on the Continental Divide. Elijah has the smallest bladder of any human on earth, so when he has to go, he has to go NOW!, and there just aren't many opportunities in Yellowstone. So we pulled off at the next turn out, which just happened to be the Continental Divide. What a memory, right?! I said, "That's what we think of YOU, Continental Divide." And Rob said, "Just think: half of his pee will go to the Pacific, and the other half will go to the Atlantic." Aww.

Day 5 - Norris and Waterfalls

Our second day was spent at the Norris area. Norris has no big geysers that are predictable, so it gets less hype than the Old Faithful area. But it has the highest-erupting geyser in the world: Steamboat Geyser. If you're there when it goes off (which, odds are, you WON'T be), you'll see it go more than 300 feet in the air. The last time that happened was in May 2005.

It would look like this:

We saw it like this:

Still cool.

Norris, like all of Yellowstone, has some cool features. You walk on a boardwalk much of the way, and you're walking right over/near pools of water and such. Pools of water randomly bubbling like this:

The second half of the day we went to the waterfalls near the Canyon area, but that'll have to be in a different post.