The Home Stretch

We woke up early Tuesday morning to finish our Yellowstone visit.  We checked out of the hotel and headed for the geysers.  Our first stop was the Norris Geyser Basin.  Here we walked a ½ mile loop through active, steaming geysers. It felt as though we were on another planet.  Some of the geysers were so loud that they compared to an airplane takeoff.  The liquid that had accumulated around the geysers was green, black, and gooey.  Needless to say, I had never seen anything like it.

               

The next stop, Midway Geyser Basin, is home to the famous Grand Prismatic Spring.  We were hoping to see the colorful, rainbow-like water that is often seen in photographs.  Unfortunately, there was so much steam that it was not clearly visible.  It was still a good walk!

                       

Finally, we stopped at the ever-popular Old Faithful.  We patiently waited twenty minutes for the geyser to erupt.  There was a kid nearby shouting, “She’s gonna blow!  She’s gonna blow!” He provided some good pre-show entertainment, however, it didn’t compare to the actual eruption, which was pretty spectacular.

We spent the next two hours slowly winding our way out of Yellowstone and though Grand Teton National Park.  I was excited when we finally found the interstate.  We made our way to Wyoming’s Guernsey State Park where we had camping reservations for the night.  We were pretty impressed with our beachside accommodations and spent some time relaxing on the sand.  However, we were in for a surprise later in the night. 

Once we were comfortably in our sleeping bags, strong winds started blowing through.  Suddenly, our tent collapsed on top of us.  It was chaotic to say the least.  Zoe ran to the car barefoot while I tried to salvage our things.  A few minutes later after the wind had passed, we went to set our tent back up.  Unfortunately, the wind had snapped one of our poles in half, so we deposited the tent into a nearby dumpster.  Zoe wasn’t keen on my suggestion to ‘sleep under the stars,’ so we headed for the nearest motel.  Although it wasn’t ideal, we made it through the night.

We started early again today exploring the Oregon Trail.  There’s a site where you can see ruts made from wagon wheels.  It was quite unbelievable.  Next, we stopped at Chimney Rock.  It looked just as it sounds.  

  

Finally, we dropped by Carhenge.  It was probably the weirdest thing we’ve seen on our trip.

The rest of the day was spent driving towards home. Luckily, we have discovered podcasts, which have helped the drives go by quickly.  Our favorites include For Crying Out Loud with Lynette Carolla and Stephanie Wilder Taylor and Allison is Your New Best Friend with Allison Rosen.  Check them out!