Yellowstone 2007

Travel Blog: Yellowstone National Park (July 2007)

            Well, this was a very interesting experience with the natural wonder we had the chance to experience. We had been to Denver, Salt Lake City, the Great Salt Lake, and Jackson Hole (Wyoming) prior to this, and this was the middle of our travels of a two-week vacation, but the three days we spent at Yellowstone were wonderful (although tiring with all the walking we did).

            I already had some prior knowledge on thermal activity like geysers, hot springs, fumaroles, and chemical mud pots, so this was a special treat for me. This was almost like another Christmas for me, a 13-year-old nerd. I could identify all of these things at first sight, and seeing them in real life was a luxury I thought I would never have a few years before! From the color of the Grand Prismatic Spring, to the beautiful form of the Minerva Terrace, to the awe of Old Faithful, every thermal spot was special in its own way, each with the smell of hard-boiled eggs (caused by the Hydrogen Sulfide gas) on the side.

            Even the landscape itself was astounding to the eye. Despite the slow recovery from the great fire of many years before, there was still an abundance of greenery in the form of trees, grass, and even lichens covering the boulders. The lakes were beautiful and radiantly blue, untarnished by human activity. Even seeing bison was cool itself; we made it a point to even get my little brother a stuffed animal bison before we got back home (which we eventually did in South Dakota)! It was funny to see one of these otherwise-gruff animals rolling in the dirt for a few seconds one time while driving from site-to-site. I was also quick to correct anyone who said “buffalo”, which do not naturally exist in America (they’re African and Asian animals); it was “bison”, and that was that!

            We stayed in a lodge in the park itself, where I looked forward to a good breakfast every morning. We would always eat lunch and dinner in some other lodge or inn somewhere in the park. It was here that I tried my first-ever huckleberry-flavored ice cream, which I never knew existed prior to this trip (that was a special treat for us three kids). My mom got a laser-engraved pocket knife (wooden, of course), we kids got a bag of small, polished minerals for the second time (we had also gotten one in Jackson Hole when we had gone whitewater rafting on the Snake River), and we all had many memories to recount to everyone when we passed through Albuquerque to see my cousins and later when we arrived home in El Paso to tell my grandparents.

            This whole trip reminded me all the more of the horribly-flawed nature of the notion that the universe was a massive accident. No chaos could ever possibly produse this wonderful order I had seen! I was all the more convinced of the Creator, the God of the Bible, and His ability to make such wonders before and after the Great Flood. Nothing has ever been able to shale my faith in this belief in God, my Lord and Savior, and His power of creation and supernatural intervention in nature so that all things happen for a purpose.

            I only have this advice: prepare for a lot of walking if you plan to go on a sight-seeing strip like this, and be ready for requests for foot massages by everyone with you!