A bison jam

I’ve been to Yellowstone once before. It was the middle of winter, I was travelling for work, and my client took me snowmobiling in between locations on the weekend. It was a lot of fun, but aside from lots of snow and trees, I didn’t really see much of the park, since it was all buried under the winter blanket. This time was much different.

Yellowstone Park is huge—I mean, it takes a couple of hours just to drive the loop without stopping. Our first day in the park, we stopped to see Old Faithful on the way to our campground. We thought it would be a quick stop, but ended up staying for a couple of hours, getting to see the famous geyser erupt twice, and walk along the boardwalk to see probably a dozen other geysers as well as lots of beautiful pools. We even were lucky enough to see the Beehive geyser erupt—something that happens once, twice, or not at all in a day.

Over the next couple of days, we saw lots of bubbling, gurgling, splatting steaming geysers throughout the park. It’s pretty amazing to look out into a white field on the side of the highway, and see steam coming up from a dozen or so openings in the ground. The geysers and pools were all so unique from each other—colourful, muddy, violent, gurgling, tiny, giant, violent, calm. Just when we thought we were geysered out, we’d make just one more stop and be amazed yet again.

We also saw lots of bison and even a couple of moose. At one point, we got stuck in a traffic jam caused by a whole herd of bison crossing the road in front—including the adorable little calves running after their moms.

Yeah, go ahead, we can wait.