Here's a little background before I launch into full-fledged explanation mode: Zak and I drove to Yellowstone on Saturday, leaving Logan at about 9 am and finally arriving around 3ish. We camped in our car (since I was a little worried about the bear situation due to numerous people sharing bear horror stories with me before the trip) at Lewis Lake. It was a beautiful lake (as most lakes are) and the campsite was nice, as campsites go. Zak and I played around at the lake, shooting rocks into the water with his slingshot and walking along the shore. I also favored Zak with a stirring rendition of "Father Abraham" (complete with all the actions) and other beloved Girls' Camp songs. I didn't realize at the time that sound carried so very well across the water. I guess the boaters on the other side of the lake were entertained, too. Or disturbed. Anyway.
We went back to the campsite at about 8 pm when it started to get dark. We decided we would go to bed, since we didn't have anything else to do. So we reclined our seats and proceeded to attempt to sleep. I'll sum up the whole night briefly: it was COLD. We had lots of blankets and sweatshirts, but we still froze. Also, due to the cold temperature, I had to go to the bathroom several times. Zak, the wonderful husband that he is, told me that I could wake him up if I needed to go to the bathroom and he'd go with me. I was still a little nervous about the whole bear thing. You never know, right?
I woke up for the last time at 4 in the morning and couldn't go back to sleep. Zak woke up at 5 (when I woke him because I had to go to the bathroom AGAIN) and we decided to drive to Old Faithful so that we could be there to see the geyser erupt when it got a little lighter outside.
Here's the explanation of the pictures: The first was taken at ... Vault Geyser! Zak and I were sitting on a bench, waiting for Old Faithful to do its thing (from across the way, by Vault Geyser) and this lady approached us and asked with a Southern drawl, "Have ya'll seen the Morning Glory Poo'?" I thought she really said "pooh" and started to point to the pile sitting close to the sign for Vault Geyser, but quickly realized that she meant pool, as in body of water. I retracted my hand and said, "Nope. Sorry!" Zak and I laughed about that for a while, since he thought the same thing and had settled on giving the lady a blank look, rather than pointing out the pile of refuse by the sign. She probably thought we were a little odd, but that's okay.
The second picture is Zak, thinking that he's completely hidden from view since he was wearing his camo shorts. Little did he know, the white socks totally gave him away! What really happened was that he was trying to push a couple of logs that were laying on the shore into Lewis Lake (what is it about boys throwing things into bodies of water?) and one of them had splashed in, so he backed up in order to avoid being hit by the water. I'm just not a great photographer. Once we left and were on our way home, Zak lamented that he hadn't brought our little inflatable boat. It would've been fun (his words, not mine) to use it on Lewis Lake.
The third picture is one that Zak took of me at Old Faithful -- he is a much better photographer than I am! I'm not sure what I'm doing with my hands in the picture, but I thought that it was a really cool shot.
The fourth picture is one of those puzzling ones. We saw this lady with her family at Prismatic Pool and were unable to figure out why she was wearing this shirt. It's one thing for a guy to be wearing it, but for a lady with a whole passel of kids to wear it... we just weren't sure where that was coming from. Zak placed himself strategically so that he could get the shot and share it with all of you, so that we could all wonder about this together. Hmmm.
You tell me, what trip to Yellowstone would be complete without some kind of close encounter with wildlife? We were driving around and took a little turn-off to see some waterfalls or something, and suddenly all the cars in front of us stopped. We craned our necks to see what the problem was, and this bison is what we saw. He was just walking down the road, minding his own business. Zak snapped the first picture and I snapped the second. Zak almost could have touched the bison, it was so close to the car. And finally, what trip to Yellowstone would be complete without a picture of an enormous boot? This was about 9 pm Sunday night. I was struggling to stay awake when we stopped for a quick break in Alpine, WY. And there it was. Zak couldn't resist.
