Hang on to your pic-a-nic baskets

For starters, most of Yellowstone lies within an enormous volcanic caldera. The charming geysers, hot springs and geothermal pools that have inspired so many picturesque postcards also serve to remind the savvy tourist that the whole place is fixing to blow again at any moment. Couple this potential for large-scale geological catastrophe with the more immediate likelihood of being gored by bison or mauled by a grizzly bear (Hey Boo-Boo!), and it quickly becomes clear that by setting off on an apparently innocent jaunt into the famous first-ever national park, we were taking our lives into our own hands.

Intrepid as ever, though, we steeled our nerves and set off west from Rapid City, through Deadwood Gulch, down the stunning Ten Sleep Canyon and at last to the historic Old Faithful Inn, just as the sun was setting and the namesake geyser was erupting. We just made our dinner reservations at the hotel’s main dining room, where we continued our commitment to menus of trout and wild game. (Laura was deeply impressed with the massive columns of twisted pine that hold up the inn itself. She's decided to hide away in the rafters and spend a long, thoughtful winter there someday, and is working on the problem of access to supplies of food, wood, whiskey and long philosophical tomes in various foreign languages.)

The park itself is enormous (over two million acres, bigger than the state of Delaware!) and we scrambled for four days just to scratch the surface of the myriad sights to behold. Indeed, we struggled to take in the vast wilderness, dissolving into incoherence time after time as we witnessed the massive geological and biological forces of the immense, untamed landscape. We covered all of the standard ground: geyser-gazing near Old Faithful, peering over the edges of the park's Grand Canyon, trying to look stoical in the face of sulfurous odors at Mammoth Hot Springs, and sitting in traffic while bison, elk and moose loped down the middle of the road.

We are pleased to report that, upon entering Yellowstone, we spotted a license plate from the great state of New Mexico, bringing our grand total to fifty states, plus the District of Columbia, and nine Canadian provinces and territories. The search continues for a roving pickup truck from Prince Edward Island...

More pictures of our exciting adventures are available here: