McCulloughver's Travels: What Is This Place?

I’ll tell ya what it is…it’s creepy!!

Our tour of Yellowstone National Park started at a lookout point over a beautiful, tranquil lake surrounded by mountain peaks. Upon further research though (Daniel read the sign about it), we found that Earthquake Lake, unfortunately aptly named, was full of discomforting history. It was the site of a riverbank campground until one fateful night in 1959. A massive earthquake shook the area causing an 80-million ton landslide to fall on the campers and, in a domino effect, some sort of weird river tsunami buried them in what is now Earthquake lake. That was some night, huh?

…so we went on to set up camp for ourselves…

Of course, a thunderstorm popped up as soon as we got the tent out of the bag, but then politely stopped the second our frantic setup was complete! Isn’t that about how it goes?!

Creepy Sign On One Of Our Trails

We always enjoy the National Parks’ Visitor Centers, but this one was different. When we walked in the front door, the walls literally said something along the lines of, “you are standing in the caldron (mouth) of one of Earth’s largest active supervolcanoes!” Come again?!?! We continued around the wall to find that there are over 2000 earthquakes in Yellowstone a year, and each one changes the “plumbing” of the volcano in some way. I’m not sure why Daniel found this so interesting or why I kept reading but we did, each plaque more terrifying than the one before! I was pleased to find out that if she did blow a cap while we were there, our crispy-fried ashes would be sprinkled over most of the US. The last straw for me was the words “unpredictable” and (my favorite) “ticking time bomb”. I had to get out of there! All the pieces were coming together for a great night’s sleep under the stars. Yeah right! I could feel my blood pressure bubbling up like the 50 million trillion gallons of magma boiling below our air mattress.

All that horror aside, Yellowstone is a pretty interestingly bizarre place.

Our first full day there was spent exploring the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, Yellowstone Lake, Old Faithful, numerous geysers, fumaroles (steam-vents), and hot springs. In between all of that, we dodged bison, antelope, and bears crowding the roadways. We were absolutely blown away with the amount of wildlife that was present here…but more on that in a minute.

Yellowstone River Waterfall

One thing that was fascinating, but quite disgusting, was the putrid smells coming from the fumaroles and other thermal features. Some of the vents smelled so much like sulfur that I had to cover my nose with our camera case…it didn’t work very well. I am pretty sure that I left smelling just like rotten eggs! Thankfully though, Old Faithful did not smell this way, so we were able to enjoy it blast well over 100 feet into the air without a hitch.

Two Of The Many Elk We Saw

Each of the three days we were in Yellowstone, we made some Jiffy Pop, got some coke, and went on an evening safari. This consisted of grabbing our snacks and jumping in our car to go and see which animals were stirring that evening. It was our ultimate goal to see some moose, but we were unlucky in that regards. We did, however, see 1000’s of bison, 3 grizzly bears, 3 black bears, 1 MASSIVE roadside bear (not sure what kind), 1 wolf, and dozens of elk, antelope, and geese. Many of the bison would literally stand in the middle of the road, causing traffic jams, forcing the park rangers to become matadors!

The rest of our time in Yellowstone involved more of the same, and although it was creepy, we enjoyed every minute of it. This was our last major stop before heading back home, and we weren’t going to let the certainly imminent super-volcanic explosion take away any of the fun from the final days of our trip.

Over the next 4 days we drove from Yellowstone to Denver to Wichita to Little Rock to Birmingham.

We had an absolute blast! We realize how blessed we are to even have the opportunity to take a trip like this and we are so thankful!

Next Stop…. Who Knows!