Vacation to Yellowstone, day 4

Day 4: August 10th, 2013

 Yellowstone National Park, North Entrance to Fishing Bridge

After gathering supplies in Bozeman, we headed into Yellowstone's North entrance, which is marked by the Roosevelt arch.  Then we went up the road to Mammoth Hot Springs  for a lunch break for before joining the crowds of tourists climbing up the wooden walkway.  At the bottom of the path was a  sign warning people to stay on the path, with a picture of a person -- apparently a child -- being scalded by a hot geyser blowing beneath him. This worried Oliver and he asked many questions about how someone might be exposed to a sudden volcanic blast. He suddenly wasn't so excited to be heading to the hot springs.

Halfway up the path, Zaeda predictably lost steam and asked to be carried.  I relented and picked her up, where the breeze soon knocked her sun hat from her head, sailing off the path, and landing 8 feet away, beside a sulphurous pond. After all the signs at the foot of the trail, there wasn't much to do but see it sitting there, a glaring pink thing in an expanse of stone and puddles, marring the view of the dozens of international tourists unloading from buses at base of the trail.

She burst into tears. There wasn't much I could do. Oliver fretted that the hat would explode into flames. We made our way down the path, both kids looking back at the lost hat woefully. I may have felt the worst;  I'd carried something foreign into this natural environment and then discarded it. It was somehow worst than littering.  I noticed a long stick beside the path used it to go back and snag up the hat. 

Hat still on

Hat blown off the walkway, into the hotsprings. A sad moment.

Mr. Not at all bothered by the many steaming pools around him.

Heading through the park, we soon encountered road blocks of people stopping to take pictures of a single bull elk. Just up the road we spotted a lone bison far away in a meadow. Around the corner, there were a hundred of them settled beside the river, up the hill, and spilling into the road where they blocked traffic for people delighted to be taking such close up pictures of them. We were in no hurry and it was fun.

Oliver with his own ccamera, sneaking up on the elk.

Settled at camp, the kids rode bikes and then we went to a gift shop for ice cream.