Yellowstone Park and Back

The trip to Yellowstone was a much-needed break for me. Youngest Sibling and I made a girls-only trip of it. The weather was much better this year – only a minor bit of rain one evening – than last year, when it snowed SIDEWAYS on us for most of a day and a half. Brrrr….. That trip, we spent a lot of time standing in the steam from the geysers and springs, so much so that I think one of my sweaters still smells like sulfur.

Highlights of this trip include:

• Seeing Castle Geyser, Grotto Geyser, and Grand Fountain Geyser erupt. I’ve seen Old Faithful several times and have been underwhelmed. The other geysers were much better. Grand Fountain was pure luck. We had a little time left in the day and decided to drive by it on our way out of the park. As we got near, we saw a lot of cars parked on the road, so we stopped and went down to the boardwalk. There we were told that the geyser could start erupting any time in the forty minutes. We stayed. We watched it erupt off and on for about 40 minutes while the sun set behind it. Awesome!



• Seeing one coyote, two moose (mama and baby), three bears (mama and two babies), 227 elk and 326 bison (many babies). We also saw an osprey hunting, but unfortunately, he didn’t spot any fish while we were watching him. ….OK, I didn’t really count the elk and bison; it just seemed like that many.



• Hiking to several beautiful falls and one lake, where we caught on (digital) vidoetape a flock of Canadian geese landing on the mirror-like surface of the water.

• Getting asked three times if Youngest Sibling and I were still in school. *ego stroke* I’ve been at my current job full-time for 15 years.
  
  
• Getting asked once if Youngest Sibling and I were twins. She’s nine years younger, and she’s blond. Sort of. And I’m, well, not.



• Getting called “you girls” twice by a waitress who was maybe 24.



• Seeing the license plates 46 of 50 U.S states (and also 5 Canadian provinces). Yes, we started counting.

• Hearing at least 8 different languages – and we probably heard more. Those were just the ones we could identify.

So the question for my few readers is... How does one say, "Hey, stupid, get away from that bison" in another langauge, any language? I know how to say it "auf Deutsch", but after that I'm stuck.

I ask because I know that my Red-Cross-certified first aid skills are not sufficient to deal with goring injury from a bison.