Honeymoon Days 6-8: Yellowstone

The story of our trip to Yellowstone begins (and ends, of course) in Wyoming, which I had never been to before. Other than watching Brokeback Mountain a couple of years ago, I knew virtually nothing about the state, and one of the first things that struck me was its strange penchant for peppering its interstates with iconic hilltop silhouettes:

buffalo

cowboy

dinosaur

jackalope

This progression of images had the strange effect of diminishing one's ability to distinguish between real and not real, and when we came to this hilltop, it took both my yin and I a moment to realize that these were, in fact, actual cows:

real cows (and one silhouette?)

Nonetheless, everything was going as planned, which made us as happy as this horse rolling in the grass north of Cheyenne:

But this is beside the point.

The point is that we made a final pit stop in Cody on our way to Yellowstone's east entrance. Inside the store, we struck up a conversation with a clerk who said, "The east entrance? I think it's closed."

"Closed?"

"Yeah," he said. "There was an avalanche last night."

"Avalanche?"

"Yep. Either you'll have to wait until it reopens at eight o'clock tonight or drive all the way around through Montana and go through the north entrance."

And so we drove through Montana:

stunning landscapes

(and rainbows)

pig races held in saloons

(and rainbows)

snow-covered clay banks

(and rainbows)

Somewhere along the way my car reached the 100,000 mile mark:

and we reached our destination just before sundown:

We checked into our hotel, and the hallway leading to our room looked oddly like the one in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining:

our hallway

Kubrick's hallway

This eerie likeness only grew over the course of the following day because Yellowstone resembles nothing so much as another planet:

Mammoth Springs

Palette Spring

above Mammoth Springs

Norris Geyser Basin

It's difficult to describe just how strange it is to see these things one after another. It seems so fake, and yet it's undeniable real. Call me old-fashioned, but it's hard for me to accept that sometimes the earth simply boils up from holes in the ground:

and that sometimes these openings just happen to look like vaginas:

But this is also beside the point.

The point is that there are also breathtakingly impressive landscapes spread across the park, ranging from this view of still-frozen Yellowstone Lake:

to this vista of "Yellowstone's Grand Canyon":

It was here that my yin and I decided to break out the tripod and self-timer, which caught us mid-goof:

The park certainly seems to bring out the silliness in us, and we found ourselves laughing time and again as our brains gradually became over-saturated with one amazing sight after another:

my yin in front of Dragon's Mouth Spring

Perhaps it's a side effect of all the sulfur in the air, which oozes and bubbles and gurgles from pits small and large alike. On the upside, one can pass gas with absolute impunity.

But this is also beside the point.

The point, finally, is that Yellowstone is lousy with wildlife. There are grizzly bears causing "bear jams":

a grizzly

and the jam it inspired

and giant frisky hares:

and once-endangered species:

and lazy elk by the streams:

A park ranger even told us that some of the old buffalo get arthritis; that's why they go to rest near the thermal springs. As with humans, it helps to ease their aching bones:

These bison are far and away the most prevalent species in the park, and what was initially met with amazement soon became commonplace. But still, we had to take a picture of this mother and her baby:

This phenomenon concerned me some, though. The animals are treated almost like circus attractions or novelties, and I felt torn between gratitude and disdain. On the one hand, I'm grateful that a place exists where animals are able to roam without fear of human predation. On the other hand, it seemed almost exploitative, with the human animals objectifying non-human animals and turning them into nothing more than photo opportunities:

one jackass, one bison

I, of course, was not immune to this tendency:

But I did my best to stay a respectful distance from the animals. Our fancy new camera and zoom lens helped to accomplish this, but it was still impossible to deny the fact that I felt that urge to get closer, to take one more picture, to see one more thing...

The fact is, however, that the best moments cannot be captured by the image and run through one's fingers like water:

my yin and copious amounts of falling water