Yellowstone

Yellowstone is America's first national park, located in northwest Wyoming. No other place in the world has such an abundance of seismic oddities such as geysers, mud pits, strange colored water and rocks, and other unique things. This was not my favorite trip, just because I didn't care much about geysers or sulfuric rocks, but I enjoyed the wildlife part. The five of us went there on two separate occasions, once when I was a child, and again when I was 13 (I don't remember the exact age). On both occasions we drove with our camper in tow and stayed at a local campground. We camped almost everywhere we went, so we all got pretty good at setting up the old pop-up tent and loading it with our stuff from the car.

Our first stop was the place everybody goes first, the Old Faithful geyser. We got there and waited for it to erupt, which it did once every hour. It was really tall, I don't have a clue what else to say about it. Mud pits were another thing, but they were more randomly spread across the park than geysers. They are just pits of mud that are boiling, if something living were to fall in, it would be roasted immediately. There were also many hot springs, and if I remember right they were filled with very toxic and acidic chemicals, drinking or touching the water there was a very bad idea. The ground sometimes gives way there too, exposing new springs or mud pits so its a good idea to stay on the boardwalks. The wildlife fall victim to not being able to understand the nature of boardwalks in Yellowstone all the time. They will be walking along eating grass and bothering nobody, when out of nowhere the ground beneath them gives way and exposes something like a mud pit or hot spring, completely engulfing the animal and leaving no trace of its existence behind, not even the bones sometimes.

Wildlife was the only thing I really cared about when I was down there. The only problem was only the Buffalo were easy to find, it was like the other animals were smart enough to understand that the word "roadkill" comes from the word "road." Not that it would be possible to kill a Buffalo without doing serious damage to your car; they are very large, very stupid, and sometimes very aggressive. Grizzly bears were the signature animal of the park, they are much bigger than black bears and far less common. We saw a grizzly bear running through a pack of elk after a baby elk. We didn't see it catch it though because it ran after it into the woods, that would have been cool. Elk are just big deer, a little smarter, but there's not much else to them. We saw wolves from about a quarter mile away, wolves are really smart (for animals) so they keep their distance from humans. They actually had a team of surveyors tracking them and taking pictures from a distance, like they didn't want to lose them or something. We saw lots of Coyotes, that is if you count their flattened corpses strewn across the road. We saw one by the road catch a mole and eat it. It wasn't afraid of our car at all, but I'm sure it would have ran if one of us got out. We need to build cars that will scare wildlife away, the fact that wildlife isn't afraid of cars is a problem for everyone.

Not a super exciting trip, but I would still go again if I had the chance. I still haven't seen wolves up close in any of the parks I've been to, so that needs to be one of my goals if I go back.