Today we did Yellowstone. In one day. BOOM!

Man, what a long ass day. Yellowstone is a big place, with lots of smelly sulfur, thermal springs, geysers, and waterfalls. All very exciting, yes. And they said that seeing Yellowstone in one day was foolish to even consider - ha!! Alex and Spooner don't mess around. When we set out to DO a national park in one day, we DO it. Don't front on us.

We slept in a bit this morning (I think the Jim Beam at the Irma Hotel had a bit to do with this) and didn't end up leaving the hotel until 11:00. There was a Wal-Mart on the way out of Cody, so we stopped and got some supplies. We got some necessary supplies that you need out west, like wrinkle-releaser and diet cokes. Good stuff. Anyhow, after an hour drive we got to Yellowstone and headed around Yellowstone Lake towards the "Grand Canyon of Yellowstone" to view some breathtaking waterfalls. These waterfalls were not just breathtaking because of their beauty, but also because the damn hikes up and down the mountain to view the waterfalls will take all the damn breath out of you. Alex assured me that it was the altitude that causing me to get so worn out, not because I'm out of shape. Ok, I'll believe that. After seeing all we could see at the canyon, we headed towards Old Faithful. It was now 3:30, and we were on a tight schedule if we were to complete our DOING of Yellowstone.

On our way to Old Faithful we stopped and saw the sulphur pits and some other areas of bubbling dirt. Very interesting stuff. Smelly, bubbly dirt. This took only a few minutes, because we quickly decided that one pit of bubbly dirt was the same as all other pits of bubbly dirt, so we didn't waste time seeing all 27 of them. We had some doing to do and continued our journey to Old Faithul. Well, once we got to the lodge we learned that the next eruption of Old Faithful was at 6:40, so we walked around and saw some other geysers. And really, one geyser is pretty much like all other geysers, but we had to stay and see Old Faithful. And I'm glad we did. That shit was dope. But by the time we got through waiting around for it's Faithful ass, it was after 7:00 and we still had about 80 miles of park driving and some more pits and shit to see before nightfall.

We jetted out of the Old Faithful area (and we beat the geyser traffic!) and up towards the Prismatic Springs. These springs were actually pretty cool, and I snapped some pictures, but by this point it was after 8:00. So we got back on the Yellowstone loop road and pressed north towards the Mammoth Terrace springs. It was our last stop, and dammit, we were gonna make it by nightfall. On the way to Mammoth I actually ran over a squirrel - I felt pretty bad, because a) I had killed a squirrel, and b) I had killed a squirrel in Yellowstone National Park - the supposedly safest natural habitat for animals in this country. But shit, he jumped out in front of me. At least it wasn't an elk, that would've done some damage to my car.

At 9:00, just as the sun was setting, we finally made it to the Mammoth Terrace springs. Alex was happy about this. So I snapped some pictures, walked some trails, and got back in the damn car to head out to our hotel in Montana. As I told Alex, I was "Yellowstoned". What a day, we DID Yellowstone.

Now, some of y'all may be wondering why I'm talking about "doing" Yellowstone. One of my pet peeves with my Wharton classmates is that they never talk about traveling somewhere, or visiting some place - they always talk about "doing" it. As in, "I think we're gonna do South America this summer", or "have you done Dubai yet?" I dunno, shit is corny to me. Kinda demeaning really. I'm sure the locals at these places love getting "done" by a bunch of privileged American twenty-somethings. But hey, I did yellowstone today. Sounds good to say. In one day, 'cause that's how I do things.